Struggling to keep up with constantly changing social media platforms? We know the feeling. As other social media platforms release similar features to Snapchat like Facebook Live and Instagram Stories, it seems every day there is a new update. We’ve got you covered with a complete guide to Snapchat’s search feature. As we all know, Snapchat is known for its private and ephemeral content sharing.
With the new Search function, which is the first new feature that Snap Inc. has introduced since its IPO in March 2017, users are able to submit Stories to a designated platform for public views. Advanced machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, is used to identify characteristics of photos and videos in order to categorize them for Search. Artificial intelligence analyzes a handful of characteristics such as text, location filters, and even the content of photos and videos themselves for detailed categorization. Users are then able to search among over 1 million stories for Snaps tagged with specific locations, events, and even keywords like “puppies” for related Snaps.
Furthermore, according to a statement from Snapchat, “some Snaps submitted to Our Stories that appear in the new Search feature will be visible for less than a day to up to a few weeks or even months.” Although this seems to challenge Snapchat’s ephemeral nature, it is not yet clear how Snapchat will decide on the lifespans of specific Snaps.
Snapchat has also made a statement announcing that the initial rollout of Stories search will not include any advertisements or sponsored filters. This, however, is predicted to change in the future in order to give marketers and advertisers a chance to reach the highly targeted 18-24 year-old teenage and adult market that Snapchat successfully caters to.
Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the debut of Stories in the coming weeks and try not to procrastinate too much falling down the Snapchat wormhole!
Image sourced from: Tubefilter
