Snapchat has built a platform for citizen journalism as much as it's built a platform for watching clips of music festivals, though CEO Evan Spiegel is hesitant to let the platform breathe in situations like the Hong Kong riots. Or, Our Story may evolve into something entirely different. Advertisers are desperate to reach the app's disproportionately young audience who check the app 14 times per day, on average. If the company can turn live Stories into an entertainment destination, we might soon see ads show up between every few snaps. Snapchat has continued aggressively pursuing the new medium, after all, which blends the timeliness of Twitter with the immediacy and authenticity of Snapchat photos and videos. While we don't have much data on the success of live Stories, I'd bet they've been successful. Some users, like entertainer Jerome Jarre, receive tens of thousands of Story views in a matter of minutes. Just a few months later, several prominent internet stars have already made their moves to the platform, posting Stories of their own that users can follow. In June, the company announced that Story views surpassed snap views on a monthly basis. What began as a fun experiment has grown into quite the staple for Snapchat. Snapchat plans to moderate each and every Campus Story, as it has done with past live Stories, only approving appropriate snaps for distribution. But don't expect a stream of kegstands and scantily clad students.
But there's one key difference between Campus Story and the company's previous series of Stories: only users present on campus can post and watch. Launching today at UCLA, USC, Penn State, and UT Austin, "Our Campus Story" lets students post snaps of what's happening around town to one communal Story. Now, Snapchat's bringing Our Story to college campuses.
Snapchat's popular Our Story feature has been used to capture live events around the world - everything from the World Cup to the Electric Daisy Carnival.