Snapchat is an extremely popular social media platform in today’s world. It allows you to share photos, videos, and messages with your friends and family and interact with them in real-time. With the app’s camera and effects, you can capture the most interesting moments of your day-to-day lives and share them with others. You can add creative filters, stickers, and text overlays to your media and send them to specific friends or post them as stories visible to all your followers.
Additionally, Snapchat offers various amazing features like lenses, Bitmojis, and augmented reality effects, making it a way more fun and engaging platform. One of the key defining features of Snapchat is its streak.
A streak is basically when you share daily snaps with someone on the platform. You and the other person need to send at least one snap within 24 hours of your last snap to keep the streak going; in case you or the other person fails to do that, you will need to start afresh.
Snapchat streaks really make you addicted to the platform, as you need to use the platform daily to keep them going. Other than that, it is well known that Snapchat uses disappearing messages; your chat with someone self-deletes 24 hours after viewing. This adds a sense of spontaneity and privacy to one’s experience.
Users also add stories on the platform for content they want to put for a longer duration and to a wider audience. Stories are a great way to meet new people who aren’t on your friend list yet; this can be done by changing the privacy of your stories to the public.
If you actively use Snapchat, you might have wondered at least once what decides the order in which Snapchat stories appear on your feed. Well, if you are curious about this, too, keep reading!
In this blog, we will explore the factors that determine the order in which stories appear on Snapchat. Let’s get started!
In What Order Do Stories Appear on Snapchat?
Snapchat incorporates various algorithms and factors in all its different features. Snapchat stories are no exception to this. The order in which stories appear on the platform is based on some of Snapchat’s algorithms as well as your interactions on the platform.
Let’s understand these in detail.
Friendship and Interactions
The first factor is definitely your friendships on the platform. The algorithm considers the people you interact with the most on Snapchat.
Stories from your close friends, that is, people with whom you frequently exchange snaps or messages, are very likely to appear at the top of your feed. This is why you might see the story of your closest friend more often at the top.
Recency
Another factor that comes into play when deciding the story order is definitely the recency of the stories.
Snapchat prioritizes recent stories; therefore, newer stories are more likely to appear higher in your feed compared to older ones.
Story Popularity
Next, Snapchat’s algorithm considers the popularity of the story.
If a particular story receives a higher engagement rate, i.e., more views, likes, comments, etc., than usual, it may be boosted higher in your feed. This can happen even if you don’t interact with that friend regularly.
Story Suggestions
Lastly, Snapchat considers story suggestions when showing you stories on your feed.
The platform includes stories from accounts or publishers it recommends based on your interests, location, or previous engagement patterns. These suggested stories can appear in between the stories from your friends.
These are the different factors that come into play when deciding the order for the stories that appear on your feed. There could be several more factors that are in play, but Snapchat hasn’t disclosed them to the public yet.
As we discussed earlier, we can discover various new people who share similar interests with us using the Snapchat Discover feature. If you are wondering what it is and how you can use it, let’s learn that in the following section.
What is Snapchat Discover?
Whenever you watch stories on Snapchat in the story section, you would have seen more stories when you scroll down. These stories are not the stories of your friends or the people you are connected with.
You get random story suggestions in the story section, and you can choose to view them or not. Let’s understand how you can discover new accounts using the Snapchat Discover feature.
Step 1: Open Snapchat on your device and login if you haven’t already.
Step 2: Once you are on your camera screen, swipe right to access the Discover page.
This is where you’ll find a curated collection of stories from various publishers, creators, and accounts. This will include your friends as well as people you don’t know yet.
Step 3: Here, you will be able to see your friends’ stories at the top. When you vertically scroll a little, you will be able to view and browse different stories and content.
There will be tiles representing different accounts or people on the platform.
Step 4: You can now tap on any story tile that catches your interest to view the full story.
These stories can include articles, videos, quizzes, interactive experiences, and much more.
While viewing a story, you can even swipe up to explore more content from the same account or person. This may include additional stories, related articles, or features from the account.
As you explore different stories and swipe up, you’ll come across accounts and people that align with your interests. To discover new accounts, tap on the account’s name or handle within a story to view their profile.
Once you’re on an account’s profile, you can tap the + button or the Follow option to start following the account. By following an account, you’ll be able to see their content on your Discover page and receive updates when they post new stories.
Snapchat often highlights featured or popular accounts and stories on the Discover page. Keep an eye out for these sections, as they can provide recommendations for new accounts for you to follow.
There is also content that Snapchat categorizes within Discover, allowing you to explore specific topics or interests. You can look for category tabs at the top of the Discover page and tap on them to browse content within those categories.
Summing it up
Well, that brings us to the end of this blog. Let’s quickly go through everything we have learned today to sum it up. We began our discussion by talking about Snapchat as one of the key social media platforms in today’s time.
Snapchat’s various distinctive features and characteristics make it stand out among its competitors. We then talked about Snapchat stories and tried to understand what it is that decides the order of stories on our feed.
There are several factors that come into play while deciding the order for Snapchat stories, and we discussed some of them. We then explored how you can find new accounts using the Snapchat Discover section.
We hope we were able to clear all your doubts and queries about Snapchat and its story’s order. If you have any more questions you would like us to address, feel free to drop them in the comments below.
We will address them in our upcoming blogs, as always!
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