Snapchat rolls out custom Stories feature to widen user base

Snapchat on 23 May, 2017 rolled out a new feature to create custom Stories. The new feature will make it easier to for users to share stories and invite friends to share Stories around major events, family gatherings, parties and more. Custom Stories can be created by a user and various other friends can be added to the story using Snapchat’s geofencing feature. Instagram, that has been in the news lately for copying many of Snapchat’s features, was first to bring out this concept in it’s popular ‘wedding hashtags’. To create a story, users can tap the “Create Story” icon in the upper right-hand corner of the Stories page. The story can be named and friends can be invited to participate from anywhere around the world. Nearby friends can be added easily as Snapchat creates a 1 block geofence around the user’s current location. If a story hasn’t been updated within a 24-hour period, it disappears in typical Snap fashion.

Snapchat’s majority youth audience can easily use the custom stories feature at prom, graduation, weddings and birthday parties to attract more friends to share their own Snaps on the story. While navigating through the Snap Stories of their friends users will notice extra rings featuring certain locations based on who has tagged that location within their own posts. After Snapchat faced setbacks in their first earning reports , the pressure grew for creating a larger user base and getting users spend more time on the app. Strategically, custom stories would help users share their story by inviting their friends to any nearby event, inviting lapsed users to start posting again. This may not be enough, but it is certainly a step in the right direction to compete against Instagram.