<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Gigaom]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://gigaom.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Carmel DeAmicis]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[http://search.gigaom.com/author/carmeldee88/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Snapchat's "Our Stories" are generating tens of millions of views]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>Snapchat is telling people how many views their &#8220;Our Story&#8221; clip receives if they make one in the collective, crowdsourced section. Based on people I&#8217;ve interviewed, it appears Snapchat&#8217;s Our Stories are hitting viewing numbers that television&#8217;s most popular shows see, although it&#8217;s tough to get a clear picture of Snapchat&#8217;s metrics.</p>
<div id="attachment_916874" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 263px"><a href="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/snapchat-snowmageddon1.png"><img  src="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/snapchat-snowmageddon1.png?w=263&#038;h=466" alt="snapchat snowmageddon" width="263" height="466" class=" aligncenter" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">One user&#8217;s snap was viewed almost 25 million times after appearing in New York&#8217;s Snowmaggedon &#8220;Our Story.&#8221;</p></div>
<p>A few weeks ago, <a href="http://alexstechthoughts.com/post/111969183966/snapchat-is-turning-into-a-gorilla" target="_blank">a friend</a> sent me a Snapchat screenshot of someone&#8217;s contribution to New York&#8217;s Snowmageddon &#8220;Our Story.&#8221; The app showed them that it was viewed 25 million times and users took a screenshot of it 5,000 times.</p>
<p>I found other &#8220;Our Story&#8221; contributors who also saw views in the tens of millions, one of whom saw views as high as 27 million. For the Snapchat newbies, &#8220;Our Story&#8221; is a collection of snaps submitted by users about certain events, like music festivals and holidays. These last 24 hours before disappearing.</p>
<p>To put &#8220;27 million views&#8221; in context, Sunday&#8217;s Oscars&#8217; views averaged <a href="http://variety.com/2015/tv/ratings/oscar-ratings-abc-telecast-down-10-in-overnights-to-four-year-low-1201439543/" target="_blank">36.6 million people</a> in the U.S., according to Nielsen ratings. That&#8217;s the Oscars &#8212; one of television&#8217;s most popular live events. Breaking Bad, which <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2013/09/30/breaking-bad-series-finale-ratings" target="_blank">famously smashed viewership records in its season finale</a>, averaged 10.3 million viewers for that episode. The caveat for both of these numbers is that Nielsen ratings aren&#8217;t always on point, but they at least give a ballpark estimate.</p>
<p>After this story ran, Snapchat reached out and clarified that these are unique user views &#8212; in other words, the &#8220;Our Story&#8221; view number isn&#8217;t inflated by people watching the story multiple times. It&#8217;s the number of actual users who viewed it. Snapchat&#8217;s most recently rumored monthly active user number is <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/08/26/snapchat-said-to-have-more-than-100-million-monthly-active-users/" target="_blank">100 million</a>.</p>
<blockquote id="quote-made-it-into-the-okt" class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Made it into the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oktoberfest?src=hash">#Oktoberfest</a> snapchat story the other day wewp, nearly 23 million views by the end <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/claimtofame?src=hash">#claimtofame</a> <a href="http://t.co/WtplQlT0R9">pic.twitter.com/WtplQlT0R9</a></p>
<p>— Martin Ferris (@MartinFerris36) <a href="https://twitter.com/MartinFerris36/status/514138794568994816">September 22, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p>As far as I can tell, Snapchat&#8217;s &#8220;Our Story&#8221; metric hasn&#8217;t been reported yet. Prior to publishing, a Snapchat spokesperson wouldn&#8217;t confirm the numbers with me. She said the only number Snapchat is currently releasing publicly about story views is that one billion stories are viewed a day, which includes individual users&#8217; stories. As a result, it doesn&#8217;t give us a good sense of <a href="https://gigaom.com/2015/02/24/the-19-billion-question-is-snapchat-the-new-television/" target="_blank">Snapchat&#8217;s ability</a> to <a href="http://alexstechthoughts.com/post/111969183966/snapchat-is-turning-into-a-gorilla" target="_blank">rival television</a> with its &#8220;second screen&#8221; features like Our Story and Discover.</p>
<p>After publishing, the company wouldn&#8217;t go on record confirming that they&#8217;re seeing this amount of views. They did however said the numbers sent to users who get a snap into a story are accurate.</p>
<p>I hopped on the phone with the 25 million Snowmageddon &#8220;Our Story&#8221; contributor, who wanted to remain anonymous, and they confirmed the data. I <a href="https://twitter.com/MartinFerris36/status/514138794568994816" target="_blank">found</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/abbyclaire15/status/564475676590604289" target="_blank">nine</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/FrancesAWood/status/530284143071223809" target="_blank">other</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/amandamaxwell10/status/508758556829437952" target="_blank">examples</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/GenelleSeldon/status/556619659701915649" target="_blank">on</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/DowntownDana/status/552966515759124481" target="_blank">Twitter</a> of people who posted similar numbers after their snaps made it in an Our Story. Almost half of them were over 10 million views.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s worth noting that some of these people published their screenshots earlier in the day, and they continued accumulating views as the 24-hour cycle went on. It&#8217;s also worth noting that people whose snaps appear earlier in the collaborative story likely see much higher views that those whose snaps appear later.</p>
<div id="attachment_916875" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 272px"><a href="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/img_1834.jpg?quality=80&strip=all"><img  src="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/img_1834.jpg?quality=80&#038;strip=all&#038;w=272&#038;h=484" alt="Dana Krangel's snap of Warehaus's social headphones was viewed by over 27 million people after it appeared in the CES &quot;Techies in Vegas&quot; Snapchat story" width="272" height="484" data-attribution-source="http://DanaKrangel/Snapchat" class=" aligncenter" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Dana Krangel&#8217;s snap of Wearhaus&#8217;s social headphones was viewed by over 27 million people after it appeared in the CES &#8220;Techies in Vegas&#8221; Snapchat story</p></div>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/DowntownDana" target="_blank">Dana Krangel</a>, a marketing manager for a <a href="http://www.wearhaus.com/" target="_blank">social headphones company</a>, landed the first snap on the CES &#8220;Techies in Vegas&#8221; story. It saw over 27 million views. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t even realize it made it to the Our Story until all these random people from my past started posting on my Facebook wall,&#8221; Krangel told me. &#8220;My sister doesn’t have Snapchat and our 13-yr-old niece sent it to her. Someone in New Zealand even tweeted it at me.&#8221;</p>
<p>Social media star Jerome Jarre <a href="http://time.com/3002803/snapchat-stars/" target="_blank">revealed his audience in a Time article</a> &#8212; he sees roughly a million views a day for his personal Snapchat Story. <a href="https://gigaom.com/2015/01/27/can-media-do-for-snapchat-what-it-did-for-facebook/" target="_blank">Views of Discover content</a>, which are clips reported and curated by media companies like Vice and CNN, are <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/02/snapchat-stories-heres-how-6-news-orgs-are-thinking-about-the-chat-app/" target="_blank">rumored to be very high</a> but the exact numbers aren&#8217;t public.</p>
<p>These early &#8220;Our Story&#8221; metrics give us a more concrete sense of Snapchat&#8217;s <a href="https://gigaom.com/2015/02/24/the-19-billion-question-is-snapchat-the-new-television/" target="_blank">potential as an entertainment broadcasting entity</a>.</p>
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