Snapchat publishers are having a hard time finding an audience for their content, according to a new survey from customer acquisition firm Fluent.
Despite the fact that Snapchat is home to traditional media outlets such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, its users are not seeking out news on the app. Overall, 61 percent of the 3,327 American adults surveyed by Fluent said they did not follow a news organization on Snapchat.
There wasn’t much love for sports publishers either, with 50 percent of respondents claiming they don’t follow the likes of ESPN, NBA, or NFL on the app. An even larger portion (57 percent) said they shun entertainment brands such as The Daily Mail and E! The stats do not reflect Snapchat’s Discover section devoted to its media partners.
Just as worrying for the company is the revelation that people are skipping adds on its app. The survey claims that 69 percent of its respondents said they “always” or “often” skip adds on Snapchat. That number spikes to 80 percent for the app’s biggest demographic: 18-24 year olds. Despite touting that age group as a “big advertising opportunity” for marketers in its IPO filing, it seems younger users are not interested in watching promotional content on the platform. Snapchat earns the majority of its revenue (which totaled $404.5 million in 2016) from ads, including full-screen Snap ads and sponsored lenses and filters.
Fluent CMO Jordan Cohen told Digiday the following about user behavior on the app: “I asked lots of millennials this question. It’s really about exclusive short, fun content. In addition to communicating with friends, they follow celebrities. They don’t really engage with ads or mainstream news outlets.”
The statistics do not bode well for the company, which is busy trying to diversify its user base and increase ads on its platform before it goes public in March.
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?