Snap + Podcasting
Last Thursday, Snap held its first ever developer conference, “Partner Summit” and announced a flurry of new ways that partners can integrate their offerings into Snapchat, or vice-versa. For example, you can add Snapchat photos or story videos to your Tinder profile. It shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise that Snap used Tinder as an example during this conference, considering that 75% of 13-34 year olds and 90% of 13-24 year olds in the U.S. use Snapchat.
Among all the announcements, the one that really caught my eye was from this tweet below:
So cool seeing @anchor on the big screen at today’s #SnapPartnerSummit, showcasing our new Creative Kit integration with @Snapchat.
Shouts to @alston and @mattcano for making this come to life 🙏
And more new ways to share your podcast coming very soon! pic.twitter.com/NRTquRub8w
— Michael Mignano (@mignano) April 5, 2019
I think this is pretty important for a few reasons. Spotify has been on a spending spree in 2019 and all of its acquisitions have been centered around podcasts. Gimlet Media and Parcast are both production studios that make podcast series, while Anchor is a service provider that makes it easy to produce & share podcasting and has a sophisticated ad tool. So, based on the tweet above, any podcast created within Spotify-owned Anchor will be easily shareable within the Snapchat app. Therefore, the first reason this is important is because it provides podcasters with another way to expose more people to their podcasts.
The second is that Snapchat as a medium allows for podcasters to engage with their fans through the app. Up until this point, I would argue that Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have been much more likely avenues for podcasters to try and grow their audience. Snap, however, represents a new, unique channel built for driving loyalty and engagement through one-to-one or group video messaging and stories. Given the fun and unobtrusive nature of Snapchat, its “disappearing” content, and its core group of young power-users, I think that certain podcasts and podcast hosts will find a ton of value in sharing their content in the same medium they engage most meaningfully with their fans.
This is just another subtle example of the ecosystem being built out to support podcasting and audio content, and doing so by leveraging existing systems and platforms. As we move into an era where AirPods and all its competitors become more and more ubiquitous, the content and use cases appear headed to follow. If you build it, they will come.
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
