Snapchat forced to open up to fight stalling growth

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has been fighting stalling growth as Facebook-backed competitors Instagram and Messenger steal its best features.

One of Snapchat’s best-received features was Stories, which was rapidly copied by Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp. Till now you had to be a fellow Snapchat user to share your Snapchat Story, and given that the Snapchat user base is much smaller than the nearly billion Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp users, it meant you could reach more people by publishing your story on those platforms, making Snapchat’s insular system, previously a positive, now a negative.

Now according to a report by Cheddar, Snapchat is looking to open up stories with a feature called “Stories Everywhere,” which would let you share stories, well, everywhere, similar to how tweets can be embedded on other websites.

The move is just one response to their stalling growth, with other moves being a redesigned user interface, a more focused feed and major improvements to their Android application.

It remains to be seen of these moves will be successful, or if Snap will continue to be a sinking ship. While the company continued to flail around, maybe they will even consider a Windows app, or will this only be well after its too late to matter?

Via The Verge