The Verge reports that Snap Channel first disappeared from its home in Snapchat’s ad-sponsored Discover tab last month. The company had indicated it would return in a different form but has now confirmed to Deadline that the project has been cancelled entirely.
Snap Channel produced its own stories, videos and even full-blown shows which users could watch within the Snapchat app. The content was produced by a team of around 15 people, led by Marcus Wiley who joined earlier this year as head of program planning and development. He previously worked as senior vice president of comedy at Fox and has now moved on from Snapchat due to the suspension of Snap Channel 2.0.
Deadline writes that the company had originally intended to relaunch the feature but decided against it when considering the costs. Instead, Discover will revert to a pure advertising platform with media delivered by Snapchat partners like ESPN and Vice.
The Snap Channel team has only recently moved into a new 12,000-square-foot studio designed to make content creation easier. Snapchat has also been working with other major production companies to create new programs. To date, it has released shows including Literally Can’t Even and Vergaraland.
Snap Channel’s curators well now be laid off with only a few young executives gaining alternative roles at the social messaging platform. The studio location is expected to be repurposed for use by other teams in the company.
Apparently, the project’s aim was to investigate how the most successful content is built so the company can help its partners who already work with the Discover tab. With the work now complete, there is no need to continue developing content at great expense. The company may return to creating its own videos and stories in the future but it will not be conducted in the same way as Snap Channel. The “Discover” tab will remain within the Snapchat app and remains the primary point of interaction for advertisers targeting users of the messaging platform.
Snapchat now sees over 100 million users every month. It is especially popular with teenagers and young adults as it allows people to send each other short, annotated photographic messages that delete themselves after a set time limit.
