Snapchat Users Can Share Stories On Social Media

In a rare show of humility for Snapchat, the app has decided to let users share their Stories on Facebook and Twitter.

Shortly, users will have the option of sharing their Stories to linked third-party accounts, even sending Stories via text or email to friends and family without a Snapchat account.

The changes come at a critical time for Snap. Late last year, the company reported its third consecutive losing quarter. During the period, it racked up revenue of just $208 million -- a net loss of $443 million. Worse, it registered only 4.5 million new daily active users.

Snap has blamed its revenue deceleration on an increased reliance on programmatic ad sales. In fact, 80% of impressions were delivered programmatically in the third quarter -- up from zero last year.

Snap said this has caused advertisers to shift from direct sales to unreserved auctions, which reduced CPM-based pricing by about 60%, year-over-year.

Analysts have said Snap’s point is a valid one. “It makes perfect sense that moving to an auction-based environment would drive down CPMs, and the extent to which that will happen is hard to predict,” Forrester analyst Melissa Parrish recently told Digital News Daily. 

More broadly, while Snap has been loath to release specific metrics, recent reports suggest that efforts to branch out beyond messaging have been unsuccessful.

Among other efforts, Snap Maps is not scaling as expected, The Daily Beast recently reported. Adding to Snap’s troubles, CNN recently announced plans to shutter its daily Snapchat show “The Update.”

After less than a year, it became clear to the news network that the show wasn’t working, yet both Snap and CNN have insisted that the imminent demise of "The Update" doesn’t have broader implications for their relationship.

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