[yusee]

Snapchat is a tabloid. The professionally made content is pure trash. I have Snap opened right now. Here is the top 5 pieces of Featured content it shows to me, a 25-yo male:

1) DailyMail: "Khloe [Kardashian] shocks with new FACE". 2) BROTHER: "Do You Actually Know The Right Way To Eat THIS?" (pictures of pizza) 3) FRIYAY: "Watch This to Start Your Weekend" 4) MTV: "These Rapper Names are SO Cringey" 5) NOW THIS: "CAUGHT ON TAPE: Drunk driver tries to trick police"

If Snap can corner the tabloid market, it could be a profitable business one day. But Facebook is on another level. Facebook has the low brow covered, but it also aggregates news. Indeed, Facebook's news sharing is so important that Facebook is a propaganda platform. Nothing on Snapchat matters. Spiegel seems to be a Steve Jobs devotee. The Jobs I imagine rolls in his grave every time he's compared to purveyors of digital junk-food and softcore porn.

[godzillabrennus]

Jobs ego was so large he’d probably love people aspiring to be like him regardless of how idiotic their business model actually is.

[pfranz]

Maybe the tabloids are to build the infrastructure and they plan to move upmarket quickly? Maybe Facebook courted users to share news while Snap is trying to court journalists? I googled "journalism at snapchat" and it looks like a lot of results trying to court young journalists.

Anecdotally, I've heard a lot of other journalists talk about Snap hiring good journalists. Separately, I swear yesterday I heard an article introduced something like; "So and so, from the NYT, currently at Snap, wrote this article for the Atlantic" which seems to reinforce that idea.

I don't use Snapchat and don't follow tabloids, but I feel like Snap has popped up on my radar occasionally with actual journalism.