Shopping Options Coming to Snapchat Discover

The Next Web

With the Snapchat Discover feature we get to view the latest news and must have items with a few quick swipes and with the now defunct Snapchat store we've seen how people could buy lenses to spruce their snaps up. Now, with the store closed and some Snapchat only publications under their belt it looks like Snapchat are getting ready to take e-commerce to the next level. This is a surprising step as once the lense store shut down Snapchat said they'd be focusing on bringing in income from their promoted lenses and advertising.

At a conference held by Re/Code on Wednesday, Joanna Coles, a member of the Snapchat board and the editor in chief at Cosmopolitan talked about how Snapchat are planning on taking on the e-commerce market this time. On the Discover platform currently there is a publication called Sweet, which popped up in November of last year.

The publication was to be posted on Snapchat only and was a brainchild of Hearst, who publish Cosmopolitan among other magazines, and Snapchat themselves. The tag line of the publication is to find something new to love every day and the posts tend to be about anything from fashion and lifestyle articles to food and music. It takes everything that people want in the magazines they publish usually aimed at young people and it brings it into the digital age. According to Coles, however, this isn't all that Sweet aims to do.

At some point in the future you'll be able to buy things off of the app. There isn't a clear plan as to how you'll be able to buy things yet, but it's likely that they'll add a buy now button. This could be vital for the people who were maybe unsure about subscribing to the digital only publication when they have their preferred multi-media publications also by Hearst but wish for a more accessible way to buy the shown items.

This isn't Hearst's first foray into an app that would allow users to not necessarily buy items but to at least be able to find the items featured in the magazines easier. Back in 2012 Hearst released their Cosmo Shopping Genie app that allowed readers to scan the items they liked in the magazine if they had the right symbol next to them, so they would know where they could get it and be reminded.

That's the only problem with finding an item of clothing online or in a publication is that sometimes you forget where you can actually buy it. Being able to buy clothing, beauty products and who knows what else within the Snapchat app will be a lot more convenient for people. For the teenagers reading the publication though there could be an issue because it could become a little too easy to buy things as a lot of teenagers do use Snapchat but that might have to be something Snapchat sorts out.

There's no set date for the change for Sweet or any information on any other publications that might also try and make some money out of this idea. All we know is that Snapchat obviously made a good decision with bringing someone from Hearst onto their board, and that it'll be interesting to see how they fare as an e-commerce platform when users are actually getting something tangible for their money as the lenses and re-plays never sold very well.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird rookie with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is hoping that Content Writing will turn out to be a good career choice in the mean time! Follow her @RosinaAtSMF

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