Snap Times: New York Times will launch its first Snapchat channel

By Keith Nelson Jr. Published February 7, 2017

The Old Gray Lady will try and bring in a younger audience in ways it never has before. On Thursday, The New York Times announced it will launch its first channel on Snapchat’s Discovery tab.

The Times’ Snapchat channel will publish daily weekday content inspired by the paper’s Morning Briefings feature in hopes of attracting the millions of young people who flock to ephemeral video platform.

Recommended Videos

“We’re seeing enormous interest on the part of younger audiences for the sort of smart, visual digital journalism for which The Times has become known. And Snapchat is an ideal place to reach that audience,” Kinsey Wilson, executive vice president, product, and technology at The New York Times Company said in the press release. No date has been set for the channel’s debut.

The Times is hoping to carry the digital success from the last three months into the new year. The newspaper added 276,000 net digital subscribers in the last three months of 2016. That is more digital subscribers added than at any three-month period since the paper first introduced digital subscriptions in 2011.

The daily briefings offer quick recaps on a variety of news stories across the world. Since debuting on The Times’ now-defunct NYT Now app in 2014, the feature has been integral in the paper’s digital footprint. The paper lauded its briefings as “among the most successful products that The Times has launched in recent years” and as “a digital manifestation of a daily newspaper,” in its recent internal report on the future of journalism.

For Snapchat, its Discovery page now adds one of the most prestigious news publications to its growing number of outlets. That list includes the Washington Journal, ESPN, Vox, Vice, and CNN.

Keith Nelson Jr.

Former Staff Writer, Entertainment

Keith Nelson Jr is a music/tech journalist making big pictures by connecting dots. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY he…

Topics

Gaming

Move over, Bungie: New York Times acquires Wordle

A person plays 'Wordle' on an iPhone.

Wordle, a popular word-based puzzle game that's dominated social media feeds in recent months, was acquired by The New York Times Company on January 31. It was the second significant gaming-related acquisition of the day, following Sony's $3.6 billion acquisition of Destiny developer Bungie.
The New York Times did not share the specific price of the acquisition, but did say in its announcement that it paid creator Josh Wardle an amount "in the low seven figures." That's a much smaller figure than Sony's acquisition, but Wordle likely reaches a lot more people than even Destiny 2 currently does.
Wordle is simple, engaging, and easy to share on social media. Image used with permission by copyright holder
While The New York Times is primarily a news publication, it has expanded into casual gaming in recent years. "The Times remains focused on becoming the essential subscription for every English-speaking person seeking to understand and engage with the world," its article on the deal said. "New York Times Games are a key part of that strategy."
Wardle claims New York Times Games played a part in the October 2021 creation of Wordle, adding that "this step feels very natural to me."
It sounds like The New York Times could eventually put Wordle behind a paywall. "The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players," The New York Times article notes, with "initially" being the keyword there. Thankfully, Wardle promises that Wordle will still be free and that wins and streaks will be preserved once the game transitions to The New York Times' website.
https://twitter.com/powerlanguish/status/1488263944309731329
The New York Times highlights how it wants to grow its digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025. Locking Wordle behind that subscription would undoubtedly drive some people to subscribe, but The New York Times also risks Wordle losing relevancy and upsetting a happy player base if it does that.
That's not something we'll have to worry about for now, as Worlde is still available for free online.

Space

SpaceX launches Cargo Dragon to ISS, catches booster on new ship for first time

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the Cargo Dragon spacecraft toward the International Space Station.

SpaceX has successfully launched a Cargo Dragon resupply ship on its way to the International Space Station (ISS), where it will deliver both scientific experiments and supplies for the crew. The Dragon was launched using a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:14 a.m. ET (12:14 a.m. PT) on Sunday, August 29, after a one-day delay from its original launch date due to poor weather.

The Dragon will now travel to the space station throughout Sunday before arriving at around 11 a.m. ET (8 a.m. PT) on Monday, August 30. This marks SpaceX's 23rd resupply mission to the ISS.

Mobile

3 reasons why a Google Store in New York could succeed where Microsoft failed

3 reasons why a google store in new york can succeed nyc

Call it a long time in the making, but an actual brick-and-mortar Google Store is coming to New York City. It’s going to be located at Google’s headquarters in the Chelsea meighborhood, which has long been an established landmark with its hard-to-miss Google signage adorning both sides of the building. Even though Google has experimented in the retail space before with its pop-up store in New York City in 2018, this time it’s looking to be a more substantial, permanent fixture. Google's not wasting any time, either, coming off the heels of Google I/O 2021.

Whenever a tech giant such as Google makes an announcement about having a physical store to showcase and sell its products, It raises a red flag because you only need to look at another behemoth to see how it can end up being a failure. I’m talking about Microsoft, which once had flourishing retail shops across the country, but ultimately shuttered all of its stores.