Search Through 1 Million Curated Stories on Snapchat
As of late, many social network services have been busy "borrowing" features from one another. Snapchat would probably be familiar with such an occurrence as their Stories feature has since inspired its competitors to introduce functionally identical features into their services.
Seeing as Snapchat can’t exactly force its competitors to rollback the features without catching flak for it, the service has decided to introduce a small addition to its Stories feature in an attempt to make it appeal more to users: a search functionality.
Read Also: 6 Tips and tricks for Snapchat
The introduction of a search functionality goes hand-in-hand with the Our Stories section of Snapchat’s Stories feature. Snapchat users can now actively seek out content from the Stories feature, making the feature feel more in line with video streaming services like YouTube. Those who are worried that their Stories will be made public as well can rest easy as only content found in the Our Stories section will be made searchable.
In order to streamline the search functionality, Snapchat has introduced a number of algorithms that are capable of sorting Stories into themes. For now, Snapchat has mentioned that the algorithm will scan caption text, time, and visual elements to sort Stories into the proper themes. Over time, the company intends to expand the ways the system categorizes submissions.
Will a search functionality be all Snapchat needs to make its Stories feature stand out from the crowd? No one knows for sure. That being said, if the other social network services begin implementing a search functionality within the coming weeks, you’ll know that Snapchat is doing something right.
As for the search functionality itself, it is currently available in selected cities in the United States, with a wider rollout planned for a later date.