Snapchat is back, and it brought the big guns: The brand new Snap Map
Facebook is trying with all its might to be cooler than Snapchat, but they just can’t seem to steal the coveted cool factor.
The Snap Map and the story
Snapchat has invented the Story. The daily happenings of the Snapchat user, posted by him for his friends to see.
Snapchat has also invented the Curated Story. A series of snaps curated by the Snap team, putting together cool snaps from all over the snap-verse.
Facebook has copied the Story, as I’ve already explained in my past post. But what Facebook just can’t seem to do, is be one step ahead of the game and do the one thing they’re missing: getting users to create content on their platform.
Snapchat has always been about content, both created and curated, and now you can see content other people create around you, not only by searching for them.
What does the Snap Map look like?
In Snapchat, when you pinch on your camera screen, you will be shown a map of your surroundings, with light blue spots showing where a few snaps are being posted. On the other hand, dark red spots will show you where some real snap action is being registered!
This has raised a few privacy issues (as usual), which doesn’t really stop anyone from using it anyway, so let’s just move on.
The marketing opportunity
Since people can see what’s going on using the map, they can discover places and events they might not have even heard of!
Clicking on the spots or one the icons will show you some of the snaps being posted there, as long as they have posted to “our story”.
People can therefore learn about their environment, see what’s hot, and perhaps even come and visit sometime.
Now add a big event so people will come over and snap about it, using a GeoFilter and you’ve got yourself a big red blotch on the map, attracting attention and bringing more people to know about your venue.
