Since their release a few years ago, Snapchat Stories have been a great way to experience events around the world from unique perspectives. While entertaining due to the behind-the-scenes views these Stories grant us, we only ever got to see what Snapchat decided to show. That all changes with Searchable Snapchat Stories.

Searchable Snapchat Stories are a potential game changer for the nascent social network. With the power of Snapchat’s AI, users will be able to search for specific stories from around the world – whether it’s a sporting event hundreds of miles away, something as general as ‘puppies’, or local events.

The impact this could have for small and medium-sized businesses remains to be seen. If a local restaurant has its own dedicated ‘Snaproom’ and customers post compelling content to it, other Snap users may easily be drawn in. Imagine someone’s at home searching for bars on a Saturday night, and they see an interesting story from that place a few blocks down that they’ve been meaning to check out. Suddenly, that bar has itself a new customer, all thanks to a Snapchat post.

Person with hands in the air recording a concert on their cell phone | Drive Social Media

As with most new and unknown things though, there are potential downfalls. Since businesses don’t directly control what goes onto their Snaproom, what happens if the algorithm doesn’t pull interesting or relevant content? Nothing too dramatic, just nobody ends up caring. But what if a controversial or illegal event is posted? The fallout could end up being quite harmful.

Despite any possible growing pains, Searchable Snapchat Stories are a big innovation with lots of promise. As Snapchat continues to update and tweak it, we expect it to be one more way for local business to be seen by potential new customers, and stay top-of-mind with their current customers.