The Oscars are one of those events that draw a lot of attention and social networks make sure that their audiences catch up to the event on their platform. Snapchat is one such network and it draws several similarities to Twitter where they have a real time aspect on their platforms.
However, traditionally, we know Snapchat as mobile only and in order to watch Live stories, content on Discover or your friend’s stories, you must have the mobile app. That is what the 200 million people on Snapchat have been accustomed to over the relatively short time the company has been around.
Their desktop experience has been, traditional, so to speak where they describe the company and links to their blog and mobile apps. However, their core functionality has never been ported to the desktop and during the Oscars, it seems like they changed that by introducing a web player.
Wow, @Snapchat uses the #Oscars to debut their stories web player – big deal – check out https://t.co/ROsQ3xmYkJ pic.twitter.com/W9yZjJ8SaE
— Nick Cicero (@nickcicero) February 29, 2016
When you login on snapchat.com/live you are greeted with a web player that lets you keep up with the events that were happening during the Academy Awards ceremony. Snapchat describes the service as:
“Get the latest news about the 2016 Oscars, including nominations, winners, predictions and red carpet fashion at the 88th Academy Awards.”
The web player mimics the player interface on mobile with volume and mute buttons at the top. When you tap on the player when watching content, it loads the next snap. When you finish watching all the snaps, it replays automatically in 5 seconds. Currently, the content that is available was updated 24 minutes ago.
What does this mean? Well, the likes of Periscope will be worried about this latest development since now Snapchat will be delivering their live content on desktop too. Secondly, it will be a great option for Snapchat users who can still keep up with events which was previously constrained on mobile. We will have to see if Snapchat will continue with this service for more events like this
