The Wall Street Journal is set to launch a channel on Snapchat, reports Kurt Wagner of Recode.
Wagner writes, “The move is significant in that, on the surface, it seems like an odd fit. Snapchat is attractive to advertisers because of its young, millennial-heavy audience, a demographic that doesn’t typically come to mind when you think about the Journal.
“But that may be exactly why this partnership makes sense. Benefits to the Journal are obvious. Snapchat provides a platform where it can reach a (predominantly) new group of readers. But Snapchat could benefit, too. The app has amassed more than 100 million daily active users, but will need to appeal to an older demographic in order for that number to keep climbing. Adding publications like the Wall Street Journal might help with that.
“The potential risk with this strategy, although certainly small at this point, is that an effort to appeal to an older demographic may turn off the young people currently using the app. If you’ll remember, there was a stretch where Facebook started to lose its coolness factor after users discovered Mom and Dad were sending them friend requests.”
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