Snapchat redesigns Discover tab to grab more attention for publishers

Snapchat has added magazine cover-like thumbnails to its Discover tab and the ability to subscribe to publishers’ channels.

Snapchat is looking to push more attention to its Discover section through a redesign that parlays the popularity of Live Stories into its publisher portal and boosts publishers’ profiles in the app’s Recent Updates section.

The redesigned Discover tab will include Live Stories — collections of publicly posted photos and videos tied to live events — alongside the daily editions of articles, videos and other content that publishers like ESPN, Cosmopolitan and Tastemade upload regularly to Snapchat. And to give publishers better odds of people checking out their daily editions, Snapchat is replacing each publisher’s logo on the Discover homepage with magazine cover-like thumbnails that will tease actual content included in that day’s edition.

Recode first reported in February on Snapchat’s plan to redesign its Discover section and allow people to subscribe to individual publisher’s channels.

But it’s unclear how willing people are to swipe over to the Discover tab in the first place. According to a Recode report last year, more people check out Discover channels by tapping on the logos listed on the Recent Updates tab — which is where people go to view the public Stories posted by people they follow, such as friends, celebrities, brands and media companies — than by tapping on the logos listed on the Discover tab. Even after the redesigned Discover tab rolls out today, people will still be able to pull up Discover channels and Live Stories from the Recent Updates tab.

Seemingly in recognition that the redesigned Discover tab may or may not fare any better than the old one, Snapchat is rolling out a new way for publishers to appear in the Recent Updates tab. People will be able to subscribe individual Discover publishers’ channels, which will display cover images for those publishers’ daily editions in a new subscriptions section that will appear at the bottom of the Recent Updates tab.