IGN Leading the Charge with their Snapchat Discover Channel
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We've had Snapchat Discover for a little over a year now, and the selection of media brands subscribed to the site has gradually widened, but for most of them, it seems like a bit of an afterthought, an amusing little appendage to their main sources of engagement. It's a shame, the potential for creative, unique content is vast. Now, it looks like the feature might have finally been graced with a yardstick, a channel which can lead by example: IGN.
The Ziff Davis owned site has been a mainstay in gaming journalism since 1996, and now it's widely regarded as the most popular gaming site of them all. They've had a Discover channel for 6 months now, and in that time they've evolved it into a library of quick-fix features for users to dive in and lap up for a few minutes each day.
The approach is based on a simple philosophy - if your content is going to be changing on a daily basis, there's no point in keeping anything too long form around, because people don't have the option of revisiting it at a later date. People are far more likely to riffle through Discover to kill a few minutes than a few hours. IGN's Discover is run by a 3 person team, tasked with making sure that 14 new items of content are published every day.
For example, at time of writing the following items are available, including but not limited to: new gameplay footage from Dark Souls 3, the cosplayer of the day, a review of Fire Emblem for 3DS, a rundown of everything being pulled from Netflix in March, a pop quiz question about Legend of Zelda, a piece about the budget of Deadpool 2 and a video tour of the Jean Cocteau Cinema given by its owner - A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. My particular favourite though? Part 2 of a countdown of the top 90 90s cartoon characters. They also recently pitted a man against a dog on Street Fighter V, so there's that.
So, you still get all the latest news and reviews, albeit filtered down, but due to the swipe-happy nature of Discover, it's easy to intermingle the pertinent content with the silly stuff. The fact that around 50% of it is exclusive to Snapchat just makes it an even more inviting option, the idea being that you dip in for the news, and everything else is just the icing on the fun-cake.
Further into this year, when events like Comic-Con and E3 kick off, IGN are planning on dropping new up-to-the-minute content throughout the day. It's an example that a lot of other media outlets could learn from, and it further strengthens Snapchat's position as a legitimate, valuable source of news and cultural content. If someone told me a few years ago that I'd have to type that sentence without a hint of sarcasm, I'd have probably laughed in their face.
Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF
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IGN Leading the Charge with their Snapchat Discover Channel
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Rating:
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Rating:
Unknown
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