Hey Snapchat, it’s me, Jeff. You may know me as Freddie, Po, or possibly Crybaby Adam.
I wanted to write this post to pass along a few important feature requests and revenue opportunities. The way in which Snapchat has helped shift the digital landscape is impressive. But I believe you have a small and rapidly shrinking window of time to implement these feature because once Instagram and Facebook get the idea, Snapchat will cede more of the digital landscape and potentially fade into obscurity as its costs grossly outpace its revenue.
Before I tell you, let me set the ground work…
I used to hate Snapchat.
- I hated that my stuff disappeared
- I hated the unintuitive UI
- I hated how difficult it is to find people
- I even hated the arrogance of turning away that $6B offer from FB
As a social business strategist, I couldn’t find many good reasons to recommend Snapchat to a client. Still, to this day, I’m hesitant to recommend it to businesses for a number of reasons. At the top of that list, is the impossibility of justifying the expense of daily content creation for something that disappears.
However, now that Facebook and Instagram have wholesale ripped off Snapchat and continue to do so, I can’t help but root for the underdog. I can’t help but want Snapchat to succeed. Some of the features I once hated, I now appreciate.
But it’s time to shake things up!
3 Ways Snapchat Can Get Its Mojo Back & Make Money
The most important question Snapchat needs to ask itself it:
Does everything need to disappear?
The impermanent nature of the content, while central to the story of Snapchat, is a significant challenge for generating revenue and convincing businesses to buy-in. It also makes it challenging to take a day off of Snapchat. It also makes it challenging to form a strategy, as a filter or lens may be there one day and gone the next.
If we look at social networks on a macro level, each one starts somewhere, and slowly begins to add features from other networks. Eventually, everything looks very similar. There’s now video on almost every platform, photos on every newsfeed, and hashtags showing up everywhere. So, if everyone is going to rip off Snapchat, then maybe Snapchat should rip off other networks.
Here are three ways Snapchat can shake things up and make money:
Snapchat Permanent Stories
…and Crossposting
Snapchat is known for the invention of the stories format, and also for making content vanish like a ghost.
But what if Snapchat was the architect of its own antithesis.
What if stories were no longer required to disappear? What if instead of a chaotic mess of bitmoji laced Snapcodes, each person had a profile? And what if those permanent stories could be saved and added to your profile to be seen, even on days where nothing new was posted? Wouldn’t it be nice to know who those random people who follow you actually are?
Think it’s crazy? I don’t.
Look at it from a revenue potential standpoint. How much easier is it to get a business to invest the time and budget into creating a story that lasts rather than one that lasts a mere 24 hours. Now think about the possibility of letting businesses pay to amplify those stories and push it to the top of people’s lists of stories? Do you think businesses would do that? I know they would.
The stories format was a groundbreaking concept, but it has looked largely the same since its inception. What originally looked like an innovation in video blogging became something else when the content disappeared. And while it has been possible for some time to download your story and upload it elsewhere, the process is clunky. What if instead, Snapchat made it easy to cross-post it to Youtube, or Facebook, or Twitter. Lord knows that Instagram’s social sharing options were instrumental in helping to raise awareness about the clever little photo app with filters. This is the sort of thing that could make Snapchat the default app for video blogging.
One more tiny thing, extend the individual video length for stories to one minute. It’s time.
Lenses
THIS one is most important to me, personally. You see, I don’t use Snapchat for anything other than the lenses. But lately, Snapchat is frustrating the crap out of me.
Every morning I wake up and check the app for new lenses. FILTER CHECK! Typically, I see 3-5 different lenses with flowers on my head, then a few with glasses, and 3-4 animals (cats, dogs, raccoons, etc). Each and every one comes complete with a voice changer.
We get it…teenage girls use Snapchat. But, so do other people.
The lenses create endless opportunities for creativity, but Snapchat needs to release control of it, and let its creators do what they do best: CREATE.
I have, to my fiancé’s delight, more than 40 different Snapchat characters. I use different lenses, change my voice, change my accent, and craft stories about these characters. It may be the only reason people follow me on Snapchat.
I also have several people with whom I’m professionally connected, who I exclusively message through Snapchat, so that I can use the lenses and make them laugh. It’s one of the best uses of Snapchat for businesses that there is…it makes business communications fun.
To illustrate the revenue potential here, I’ve spent, much to Netmarble’s delight, over $100 on Marvel Future Fight, an iOS video game. People are used to buying in microtransactions, and if video games and the iMessage sticker library is any indication, that trend is effective.
My suggestion, create a directory of lenses and let us save the ones we want for $0.99. Go further, let us buy voice filters and overlay filters too! Now people can create with their favorite lenses voice filters, and overlays…all the time!
What do you really have to lose here? I know you’d get at least $40 out of me, AND I’ll actually start using the app regularly. I can’t possibly be the only one.
The Directory
Finally, why is it so damn hard to find people on Snapchat? One of the reasons that people use Instagram over Snapchat for stories, is because they already have an audience there and that audience is easy to reach.
Yes, it should still be made easy for people to fade into obscurity on Snapchat, that’s part of the point. But what about those who want the attention? Snapchat needs a directory, one that they own (unlike Ghostcodes).
To do this would also require Snapchat to create the aforementioned user profiles so that people could talk about what they use Snapchat for.
This directory could easily feature and influencer backend that businesses could pay to access and search. It could also feature promoted positioning.
This is an informed opinion piece
Look, this could easily read like a rant, or a perspective using a sample size of one to explain a single perspective on how to improve Snapchat…but it’s more than that.
The truth is that Snapchat is losing. Instagram is stealing mindshare and attention and Snapchat needs to fight back. The dominant social player is doing everything it can to destroy its number one threat. The only option is to innovate and adapt. The disappearing picture and video thing were cute for a while, and there’s still a place for it, but in order to succeed as a public company, Snapchat must face the reality that it must generate revenue or face a slow decline. Twitter will (likely) continue on in some form because it is the media darling and favorite platform of the POTUS. But Snapchat doesn’t have that luxury. No one can pull up a celebrity’s Snaps from several years ago, and that, among other things is what Snapchat needs to correct.