• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, November 23, 2015

Further challenging Twitter and other content aggregation services, Snapchat is rolling out a Story Explorer option for users to drill deeper into particular topics.

Now, if Snapchat users come across a story of interest, they can simply swipe upwards to see related content.

At last count, Live Stories now attracts a reported audience of around 20 million people every 24 hours.

Similarly, Twitter recently rolled out Moments -- a service that surfaces timely content in clearly defined blocks -- while Instagram just began testing aggregated content streams.

More broadly, Snapchat is reportedly enjoying 6 billion video views a day, which represents a 300% increase since May. Those numbers aren’t far off from the 8 billion daily video views that Facebook presently sees across mobile and desktop.

The numbers are even more impressive when you consider that Snapchat claims around 100 million daily active users, which is less than one-tenth of Facebook’s 1.01 billion daily active users.

Snapchat recently raised an additional $537 million in new funding, which valued the company at $16 billion -- prompting renewed scrutiny of its business model and potential profitability. 

Story Explorer is rolling out in New York and Los Angeles, today, and should expand to more areas over the coming weeks and months.