Snapchat announces new Stories search feature, making content discovery easier

As it continues to improve upon its search features, Snapchat today announced an update targeted at Stories. The company says that the new feature allows users to find relevant Stories by entering a single keyword. Called Stories in Search, the feature makes it significantly easier for users to discover additional content…

Snapchat announced the new feature in a blog post today, explaining that it is using advanced machine learning to aggregate Stories from users and brands based on where and what the Stories focus on.

Essentially, what Snapchat is doing here is taking all of the Stories submitted to its “Our Story” feature and making them searchable for users. For instance, the company says that you can search simply for “puppies” and see a Story full of puppy videos and images. The feature is much more advanced than that, however, and allows you to even search for a specific location:

We’ve built a new way to understand what’s happening in Snaps that are submitted to Our Story, and to create new Stories using advanced machine learning. The results have been amazing: you can search over one million unique Stories on Snapchat!

In addition to our professionally curated Stories, you can watch a local basketball game, check out the scene at your favorite bar, view your favorite Fashion Week shows, get inspired by a faraway place, or simply tap through a Story full of puppies — there’s a Story for everything!

Snapchat hopes that Stories in Search will make it easier for users to find content that they’re interested in, even if they’ve already watched all of the Stories their friends have posted. In turn, this should increase the time users spend in the Snapchat app and open up additional advertising opportunities for Snap.

Snapchat has been criticized in the past for a lack of user discovery features, but with the new Stories in Search feature and other efforts like universal search, the company is making clear improvements.

The feature is somewhat hard to explain and Snapchat hasn’t made it explicitly clear as to how it works, but the video below offers up a few additional details. Snapchat says the Stories in Search feature is rolling out now  in “select cities” and will come to additional cities over time.

https://youtu.be/XyqQtm4wETA