Snapchat Adds Live Stories

Story by Liz Kendall

Snapchat – the popular picture-sharing social media platform – revealed a new feature called Live Stories back in Aug. of 2014. This feature presents stories, a series of videos and photos,  from around the world that any Snapchat user can view for 24 hours (unlike user stories which can only be viewed by their friends on Snapchat). Beach Bums, a recent live story, highlighted people on oceanside vacations and Austin City Limits highlighted a three day music festival in Austin City Limits. In the early months of the new feature more than 10 million people were viewing the stories. The views have skyrocketed since the release, now reaching a whopping 20 million according to Gigaom.com.

Zach Courbat, who uses snapchat everyday, is very fond of the live feature. “Snapchat keeps me updated on everything and shows me what the world is up to,” said Courbat.

Anyone can contribute to the live stories as long as you are in the area. Take a video or a picture through the snapchat app and send it to “Our Story” on your contacts list. According to Quora.com (a Q&A website), a staff of people based in Venice Beach and New York City will choose the content that will appear on the live story.

Snapchat provides consumers with a way to keep up with current events around the world. Perhaps the next time you take a trip abroad or jam at a popular music festival, you will find yourself featured on a live story.