Can Spotify Save Snapchat?

Sahail Ashraf — November 15, 2019

If we have learnt anything in social media marketing, it’s that if you stop moving, you die. Innovation and integration are the key areas in which a social media platform has to operate in, on a regular basis. Basically, if you’re not changing or adding on extras every few months, you’re not relevant.

This brings us to Snapchat, which has had a tough time in recent months. It hasn’t been developing the kind of buzz it used to, and this has meant that it has presented as being on the wayside a little. If it doesn’t pick itself up soon with a feature or two that makes it vastly different to other services, it may be dropped by the public. Once the darling of the online world, it’s currently waiting in the wings a little.

So what’s the big deal?

On Snapchat, and as long as the Snapchat app is on the same device that you have Spotify on, you can now instantly share the music you are listening to on Spotify with friends. It’s a great feature that allows you to share music directly. It’s fun, and it’s highly relevant to Snapchat’s young audience. It’s a welcome update.

The only problem is, it’s been done before. Instagram has been doing the same thing for ages now, which makes Snapchat (once the cool young kid on the block that set trends) slow on the uptake.

No one can deny that the process is fun, and for music lovers it’s perfect. But the fact that the feature was available on Instagram, and even Facebook Stories, means that Snapchat is starting to look a little old.

Spotify explained it like this:

With Spotify, you can listen to your favorite music and podcasts anytime, anywhere. With Snapchat, you can share what you’re up to instantaneously. Soon you’ll be able to combine the two seamlessly and share what you’re listening to in a Snap [story].

For the Record, September 9th, 2019.

The problem

Snapchat is suffering here. Everything it seems to do is now either something that has been done before or is not interesting enough to make a difference. Facebook, which owns everything else, is currently effectively looking at the most exciting and engaging processes on social media and stealing it for itself to use. That’s not an empty comment. It is actually trying to integrate and innovate on an almost monthly basis.

If Snapchat is working so hard to catch up with Instagram, the next piece of news is sure to scare the flagging platform even more.

Threads

Facebook is working on a new app called Threads. This will allow (we’re not sure on the details, which are sketchy) users to share posts and other items with their close friends and family. For example, you can share your battery life with another Threads contact (not the actual battery life, but the details of it), as well as your actual speed. This makes perfect sense if you’re travelling somewhere and you get into a spot of trouble, for example.

Threads is all about engagement, on an almost private level. And that is exactly what Snapchat used to have. You couldn’t just go and drop in on people.You had to be connected. Snapchat was popular for that reason. It was more personal, and it was ephemeral too. That was true innovation.

Facebook has been talking a lot about privacy lately, and even private messaging. It wants to make our world smaller and more intimate. Threads if it arrives, (because Facebook could always pull the plug before it does) is a clear attempt to grab some of that intimate feel that Snapchat users had. The engagement inside Snapchat is what made Facebook jealous. If the level of engagement can be built into Threads, Facebook could be the reason why Snapchat, ultimately, dies.

Will it die? We think it may suffer hugely. It has nothing like the overwhelming presence Facebook or Instagram does. And on top of all of that, it has nothing new to show off. It is just Snapchat. Fun as it is, it needs to be able to keep up with Facebook and Instagram and, ultimately, overtake them both. We cannot see that happening, can you?

So, to answer the question in the title, we don’t think it can save Snapchat. Let’s hope something can.

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