Ephemeral messaging app Snapchat has said goodbye to its in-house content efforts.
According to a report from Deadline, the company has permanently shut down Snap Channel, the name of its own content in Discover, leading to the departure of much of the team, including head of program planning and development Marcus Wiley. When the company launched Discover, the special content hub within its app in January and its biggest bet on making money, it included content channels from a few partner publishers, as well as one for its own material, such as short series, and music videos.
Snapchat removed its channel from Discover a couple of weeks ago, replaced by Refinery29, with the plan of relaunching it with entirely new content. However, after a more careful examination of the resources that would require, Snapchat has decided against it, according to Deadline. The company will lay off most of Snap Channel’s 15-person team, though possibly reassigning a few junior managers elsewhere.
Snapchat’s original goal with its channel was to experiment with content creation and figure out what goes into making successful content for its Discover hub, according to Deadline’s sources. It seems the company has largely achieved this and has no problems leaning more heavily on its partner publishers’ content now.
With that said, Deadline notes that this doesn’t mean that Snapchat has forever closed the door on making original content — only that it will take a form other than via its Snap Channel.
Snapchat currently has 100 million daily active users, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel revealed in May.