As ubiquitous as Snapchat may seem for a certain segment of the population, Snap, the company behind the app is still looking for ways to expand its reach and attract new users. To that end, Snap on Tuesday announced that users will be able to send some Snapchat Stories to their friends via email or text message. Recode reports that Snapchat will create a link for the Story, which will direct the recipient to a video player on Snapchat.com.
For the time being, only certain Stories will be shareable with a link. For example, your own personal Stories will still be relegated to the app, but Our Stories, Search Stories and Official Stories can all be shared. Not only does this give Snap some degree of control over the content being shared on other platforms, but that content is also more likely to be relevant to a larger audience. No matter how great your Stories are, celebrities win every time.
Until this update, the only way to share Stories was to download them to your phone and then manually distribute them. By removing this barrier for certain Stories, Snapchat has the opportunity to reach an audience it never would have if it had continued to force everyone to download its app to see any content.
It’s impossible to know what kind of effect this development will have on Snapchat, but now that it’s possible to share Stories and embed them on third-party sites, expect to start seeing them far more often. Snapchat might not have the ceiling of Instagram, which has taken over social media with embeddable photos and videos, but by allowing Stories to flourish outside of the app, Snapchat could find a new audience it never would have otherwise.
