Top Articles: Breaking Down Snapchats Strategy and Business Value

Oh, Snap! Since its highly anticipated IPO in March, Snap has dealt with several challenges: performance pressure from Wall Street, takedowns from analysts, and an ongoing copying spree from its competitors, especially Facebook. On top of that, user growth has stalled, framing the IPO as a disappointment.

In spite all of this, Snap has slowly but steadily continued to innovate. By not limiting itself to what is currently in market, Snap offers an insightful case study on the business value of leveraging trends, including User Experience Design, navigation, User Interface, and ecosystem building. Snaps future is at once promising and uncertain.

But brands should not discount the platforms ever-expanding ecosystem. Here are the top articles to read this week:1. Advertisers Are Finally Warming Up To SnapchatBy Graham Rapier from Business InsiderIn July, Snap launched Snap Publisher, which lets marketers cut vertical videos in less than two minutes.

Snapchats unique vertical video orientation was previously an obstacle for many publishers and advertisers who were used to the traditional horizontal video formats, which is why Snap Publisher was such a game changer. And its because of innovations like this that Credit Suisse has raised Snaps stock price ahead of earnings to higher than its been since June. Essentially, Snapchat has tremendous business value, and theyre making sure everyone knows it.

2. Inside Evan Spiegels Quest To Map Snaps FutureBy Jessi Hempel from BackchannelSnap is particularly good at adapting to the changing tech market by understanding user behavior. CEO and founder Evan Spiegel understood early on that visual interfaces would replace textual interfaces, which is why Snap is a camera company and not a social media platform.

Continuing the trend of recognizing how users behave online, Snapchat has launched Context Cards. Snap realized that the way we make decisions to do almost anything nowadays is by getting more information online, especially through recommendations. Snap is able to stay afloat by constantly evolving and not restricting what being a camera company means.

3. Snapchats Context Cards Update Brings It Closer To A WeChat CompetitorBy Kerry Flynn from MashableIf you live in China, you can realistically use a single app for all of your smartphone interactions. On WeChat, users can complete a banking transaction, play mobile games, chat with friends, transfer files, and pretty much everything else in between.

It has long been a goal of all the major tech platforms to become the U.S. version of WeChat, but Snapchat appears to be the closest.

With their new Context Cards, Snapchat is acting as a direct portal from brands to consumers. Context Cards let users access more information about a location or product that they see in a picture or video, all while keeping a great user experience via a cohesive ecosystem. And its image-focused approach sets it apart from the other platforms vying to be the one app to rule them all, one app to bind them.

4. Evan Spiegel Thinks Hardware Will Be An Important Part Of Snaps Business In A DecadeBy Alex Heath from Business InsiderHardware is an important component of the digital experience, as Evan Spiegel knows. Currently, Snap has their Spectacles and there are rumors of a Snap drone.

Because its digital platform is being copied left and right, Snapchat rebranded itself as Snap in order to expand beyond its mobile app and into the world of devices. The line between hardware and software is becoming thinner and thinner and Snap is preparing for when that line is gone completely. 5.

Snapchats Next Trick Could Be Adding Facial Recognition To BitmojiBy Karissa Bell from MashableInstead of using facial recognition solely for identification purposes, Snapchat is gamifying this perceptual user interface. Snapchat might soon be able to use facial recognition tech to automate avatar generation. Other platforms like Facebooks Oculus already generate avatars based on the photos they have of you, but what makes Snapchats proposal different is the facial recognition aspect that would automate the process.

Again, while everyone else is using facial recognition to recognize, Snap is thinking outside the box.BONUS: Your Complete Guide To Snapchat: Snap, Filter, And RollBy Rachel Kaser from The Next WebThis week, The Next Web has kindly put out a how-to guide for using Snapchat. Though the app has a great user experience, the onboarding process can be a bit tricky to navigate.

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