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As Iraqi and Kurdish forces fight to take back the city of Mosul from Islamic State militants, the team at Snapchat, thousands of miles away, is sorting through a trove of videos taken from the ground for its own real-time news coverage. Yes, the company that began simply as a self-destructing messaging app has grown into a breaking news channel — one that for the first time this week featured a war zone.
For 24 hours from Oct. 19 to 20, Snapchat ran an ongoing Live Story, a curated collection of submitted videos of the frontline in Iraq and other related events like President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials addressing the nation about the attack.
SEE ALSO:Snapchat says it's a camera company with more TV-like content to comeThe nearly five-minute long feed, called "Attack on ISIS" and accessible globally, showed U.S. army members boarding trucks, smoke rising above ISIS camps, humanitarian relief workers dispensing food and citizens of Iraq wishing good luck to the soldiers (some of which were translated).
It's the latest piece of coverage in what has become a much larger effort by Snap Inc., the company formerly known as Snapchat, to provide its growing and aging audience with informative and interesting news.
This week, ABC News foreign correspondent Alexander Marquardt shared updates throughout the area from Monday to Wednesday. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees also submitted videos and information to Snapchat, for the first time.
Credit: snapchat screenshotsShowing footage inside a war zone led to excitement from some app users. "Never thought I'd get closer to the war in Mosul through Snapchat. I love technology," Rodolfo Santoyo, a 20-year-old student at The King's College in New York City, tweeted.
He later told Mashable, "I'm always watching the news so I knew about the Iraqi mission in Mosul. The raw content [on Snapchat] made it a much more rich story."
Others were a bit skeptical on the appropriate of the platform.
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During Hurricane Matthew, Snapchat also created a Live Story from Oct. 8 to 11. More than 10 million people viewed it over the four days, an indication of a clear hunger for news on its app. Instead of turning on the television, millions of people can follow along on their smartphones.
For Erica White of Ocala, Florida, Snapchat provided her a wider lens into the storm even as she was in the middle of it — and without the chance to watch the news on her TV.
Snaps from day one of the Hurricane Matthew Live StoryCredit: snapchat screenshots"I could see the impact of the storm from different locations," White, 18, told Mashable. "We didn't have power."
To Snapchat's advantage and users' own enjoyment, they can also participate. Snapchat touts a network of more than 150 million daily active users globally who can become contributors. The barrier to entry for anyone else: own a smartphone and download an app.
Among the more than a million submissions for the Hurricane Matthew Live Story, Snapchat received snaps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Coast Guard, North Carolina Gov. Patrick McCrory and a meteorologist from The Weather Channel, for the first time.
"We think of ourselves as a camera company, a connected camera that can do some pretty powerful things when our community is capturing their perspectives on so many things that are happening in the world," Sean Mills, Snap's head of original content, told Mashable.
This month was not Snapchat's first foray into breaking news, but it is evidence of the company's continued commitment to news gathering and distribution — something the team plans to expand more internationally — as well as as a need to put more potentially lucrative content on its platform as it begins prepping for an initial public offering expected next year.
Building the story
Snapchat's entry into live events began with the release of Our Stories in 2014. It first curated footage at music festivals like Electric Daisy Festival, Outside Lands and Lollapalooza. Snapchat has since made stories about sports, including college football games, and taken users to celebratory events like the 27th night of Ramadan in Mecca.
Following the Paris attacks in November, Snapchat began to more intensely consider its potential with breaking news and hard news stories. It chose not to curate from the crime scene that day but instead created an in memorandum story after the fact.
During the attacks in San Bernardino, California in December, Snapchat produced a breaking news story after spotting related footage in the user-submitted content from Los Angeles.
Not unlike a traditional newsroom, Snapchat hosts a daily editorial meeting where they determine what to cover.
Snapchat is now taking more of an active role in news planning. The company hired experienced journalists like Peter Hamby, formerly of CNN, as the head of news along with Katy Byron, also formerly of CNN, as managing editor of news.
In September, the company discontinued the 24-hour, city-based feeds like the one in Los Angeles to instead focus more on live events.
Some events are known long before the day like the political debates and sports games, but the team maintains constant communication throughout the day in case any news breaks.
With each event, the team debates if Snapchat can bring a unique perspective. If the answer is yes, the app will offer a geofence in related areas. Just because a geofence is created does not mean a story is pushed live.
A team of 75 curators at Snapchat then look at the submissions. Illustrators add context like names, facts, dates and locations and create accompanying graphics. For instance, they created a weather map, for the first time, for Hurricane Matthew.
Credit: snapchat screenshotsAhead of Hurricane Matthew, Snapchat employees had contacted government agencies, local politicians, journalists and other experts suggesting they submit to the feed, which then resulted in several first-time contributions.
Rafael Lemaitre, national director of public affairs at FEMA, told Mashableparticipating in the Live Story on Hurricane Matthew was a "no-brainer." Digital platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, have become the primary way the agency reaches people.
"Snapchat provided us with not only real-time information of what was happened but an opportunity to be a part of the conversation," Lemaitre said. At a time when political news coverage can dominate what airs on television, "Snapchat can help us bypass news media as a direct filter into an audience."
The Snapchat network
Breaking news is competing for attention among platforms and publishers, some of which are fueled with legacy resources and big cash, but Snapchat has a leg-up in a devout audience and a commitment to storytelling.
For platforms, Facebook is a news source for more than 44 percent of adults in the U.S., according to Pew Research, and its live video experience has lured traditional TV broadcasters to stream, including the man climbing Trump Tower and the battle of Mosul, directly to its site. Twitter also offers publishers live video with its app Periscope and has a curation feed called Moments.
But Snapchat provides perhaps the best direct conduit to millennials, with 41 percent of those 18 to 34 year olds in the U.S. active on the platform. The app is quickly becoming the most preferred social platform compared to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter among millennials.
At a time when political news coverage can dominate what airs on television, "Snapchat can help us bypass news media as a direct filter into an audience."
A recent study of 10,000 U.S. teens by investment bank Piper Jaffray found that Snapchat is the favorite network for 35 percent of those surveyed, up from 17 percent a year prior.
Snap calls itself a "camera company," but it does not vehemently deny being a media company unlike the world's largest social network — Facebook. Indeed, Snap's Hamby as head of news has worked to create a legitimate editorial strategy.
While Facebook laid off journalists who once curated and provided content to trending news, Snapchat has hired more internally and encourages others to contribute. For instance, ABC's Marquadt and Al Jazeera's Imran Kahn both submitted to the Live Story on Mosul.
In the past year, Snapchat has grown as a content hub, with Shows, like E!'s new series, Live Stories for events and breaking news, and Discover, its network of media partners (Mashableis among them).
Snapchat's own Live Stories and Discover are not supposed to be in competition. Media companies' channels are intended to work in tandem and provide additional context.
"For us, it’s less about giving people information and facts in a traditional third-person way and much more about bringing people into a news event first-person," Snap's Mills said.
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For example, NowThis's coverage of Hurricane Matthew on Discover included a series of dispatches about the event. "Each day focused on one takeaway of the bigger picture. By examining Matthew from these differing angles, the goal was to hold a reader’s commitment to the story day after day," Lo Martin, director of editorial creative at NowThis, told Mashable.
Meanwhile, Snapchat is looking to improve its ability to cover events faster. That includes growing the news team by expanding internationally as well as improving its technology to more easily sift through the millions of submissions it receives.
For Santoyo, the student at The King's College, more news coverage is a welcomed addition to Snapchat. Back in 2013 as a sophomore in high school, he had downloaded the app for casual messaging.
"The filters and text you can add make the picture more interesting. However, lately I've been paying attention to the stories on there. They add content in there because they know teens will see it and start talking about it. Every time there is a good story I hear it from friends," he said.
TopicsSnapchat