Google Is Developing Technology for Snapchat-Like Media Content -- Update
05 August 2017 - 7:47AM
Dow Jones News
By Amol Sharma and Jack Marshall
Google is developing technology to let publishers create
visual-oriented media content along the lines of Snapchat's
"Discover," according to people familiar with the situation, upping
the ante in a race among tech giants to dominate news dissemination
on smartphones.
Alphabet Inc.'s Google has been in discussions with several
publishers, including Vox Media, CNN, Mic, the Washington Post and
Time Inc., to participate in the project, which is dubbed "Stamp,"
the people say. It could be announced as early as next week, one of
the people said.
Google is building the service around its "AMP" mobile webpages,
which are designed to load faster than regular webpages. The "St"
in Stamp stands for "stories."
Participating publishers would run stories that could be several
swipeable slides encompassing text, photos and video, just as on
Snap Inc.'s Snapchat, the people familiar with the situation
say.
"Ever since the beginning of AMP we've constantly collaborated
with publishers, and are working on many new features," said a
Google spokeswoman, who provided no further details.
Google is stepping up its efforts in a busy area of the digital
media landscape. In addition to Snapchat, Facebook Inc. has its
Instant Articles platform, which carries content from a variety of
big-name publishers, while Apple Inc. has the Apple News app.
Publishers are trying to figure out how best to allocate their
resources as the means to deliver news and information constantly
evolve. Producing and formatting content for different digital
platforms can be costly, they say, but optimizing for Google is a
priority because of the company's ability to widely distribute
content.
One of the main attractions of Google's service is that it would
be tied into the company's search product, giving publishers a big
built-in audience for Stamp stories. The Stamp versions of stories
could be surfaced in Google search results, or within other Google
products, people familiar with the program said, as AMP pages are
currently.
Also, the stories could be surfaced on publishers' own sites, a
model that is different from Snapchat, where stories are hosted by
Snapchat itself and are only available via the app.
Details of the financial arrangements between Google and
publishers, including how they would split any ad revenue, weren't
clear.
The type of advertising that might be featured in Stamp articles
is still being figured out, people familiar with the program
said.
The introduction of Stamp articles may be another pressure point
for Snap, which has faced questions about its ability to continue
to stand out in a crowded social-media market. Google is only the
latest technology behemoth to adopt features similar to Snap's.
Facebook and its Instagram platform have been imitating many of the
younger company's features over the past year.
While Facebook and Snap are pushing publishers to post content
directly to their apps, Google is instead developing tools designed
to encourage publishers to invest in their mobile web properties.
The move is consistent with Google's focus on the open web, from
which the company currently generates the majority of its ad
revenues.
Apps such as Snapchat currently offer the ability to create more
dynamic experiences than Google's AMP feature has to date,
publishers say. But they are hopeful Stamp could offer a way to
bring more "app-like" content to their mobile web audiences without
creating slow, cumbersome pages in the process.
Write to Amol Sharma at amol.sharma@wsj.com and Jack Marshall at
Jack.Marshall@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 04, 2017 17:32 ET (21:32 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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