Snapchat for Product Launch or Project Status Reporting?

by Alex Roan on Jun 22, 2015

Casey Neistat on YouTube is one of my favourite channels. Casey is a self taught film maker based in New York. He frequently posts VLOGS (video logs) on youtube that offer a great insight into the lifestyle of a sociable guy who is really into creating and sharing video.

I recently installed Snapchat on my phone after I heard Casey mention it in one of his YouTube VLOGS. In case you are not familiar with Snapchat, it allows you to share snaps; either photos or up to 10 second video clips, which then disapear after being viewed. One of the features of Snapchat is called stories, stories let users string snaps together to create a narrative that can be viewed for up to 24 hours.

As an example, I saw one story shared by Casey on Snapchat which was a series of short video clips taken over the course of a day. The result is a 1-2 minute story that walks you through the course of his day. The format is excellent in the way it can share short peices of information, with a strong sense of transition of time over the day. When I saw this I thought about status reporting in business.

Consider when a lot of activity is happening, such as a new product launch or when a major IT system is going live. Imagine if your project or initiative manager could take short video clips of various activities and immediately publish those stringed together into stories. Some of the potential:

This wouldn't replace formal project or product launch reporting tools, but would provide a less formal, fast and easy way to communicate to stakeholders and other interested parties. I have managed large business transformation projects and at go-live communication is challenging.

I often find I need to be walking around helping the team, monitoring and resolving issues. In this situation finding the time to send update e-mails or god forbid write powerpoint status updates is difficult. Being able to take short 10 second video clips here and there throughout the day as I move around would be much easier, and could be shared much more quickly. For many teenagers creating Snapchat stories about their day is normal. I imagine when they graduate to business lives they will bring this kind of approach with them. But in the meantime, can the current generation of business people embrace these new ways of using social media?

The photo above was taken in the amazing 'soul bakery' korean restaurant in London that has unfortunately been closed down as they redevelop Tottenham Court Road area.