Your move, Facebook: content search comes to Snapchat Stories

If you were paying close attention Friday, you may have felt a slight shift in breeze from the direction of Silicon Valley. This wasn’t the result of climate change — it was the collective sigh of all Facebook employees who just got the Snapchat clone up and running, only for Snap to update its Stories game yet again.

On Friday, Snap announced that it was rolling out a feature that took Our Story and made it more accessible. Before, the feature was once-off and strictly vetted, allowing users to add their snaps to Our Story in the hopes that moderators would choose theirs for the final Story that appeared publicly on the app.

Users can now search ‘over one million’ Snapchat Stories thanks to the latest update

“Our Stories have provided behind the scenes Snaps from interesting events all around the world — from the field of the Super Bowl to the summit of Mount Everest!” Snap writes in the announcement. “Over time, the number of Snaps that were created by our community and added to Our Story simply overwhelmed our curation team — and inspired us to create something new.”

That something new is a search feature. Snap is no longer only providing professionally curated stories — now, local communities will have their own Stories to which they can add their content. This allows for more freedom in what users are uploading, as well as in what they’re viewing.

Snap is boasting over one million Snapchat Stories to choose from: from local basketball games to a story dedicated to puppies.

What isn’t clear is how Snap intends on moderating such a large amount of content to keep the stories clear of spam or adult content. This may be because Snap isn’t too sure on its process either, which would explain why it’s rolling out to select cities first.

Whatever the process, I wish the Facebook engineers good luck. I look forward to re-writing this article in August.