Google has joined Instagram, Facebook and Twitter in creating a “knock-off” version of Snapchat’s popular Stories feature.
Last week, the tech giant announced the launched of AMP Stories, as part of its Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (a.k.a. AMP Project).
The initiative aims at improving the performance of web content and advertisements, and is a direct competitor of Facebook’s Instant Articles. And Google’s goal with AMP Stores is to provide publishers with a mobile-focused format for delivering news and information to readers. Essentially, it’s quite similar to “Discovery” in Snapchat.
As Google wants to keep the feature accessible to everyone, there is no need to download a new Stories app. If you’re interested in checking out AMP Stories, all you need to do is search g.co/ampstories in your smartphone’s browser.
You will then be directed to a page that looks very similar to Google’s homepage.
Search any participating publisher and/or media outlet, and scroll down until you view visual stories from the publishers. Click on the Story of your choice and tap your way through it – all within your mobile web browser.
You can also view AMP Stories on your desktop browser by going to www.ampproject.org/stories and scrolling to the bottom, to view the most recent Story.
Rudy Galfi, product manager for AMP, told AdWeek that while AMP Stories currently do not support advertising, Google will allow publishers to insert ads within their content – with publishers keeping 100 percent of the revenue.
Would you use Google’s AMP Stories to keep up with current affairs? Let us know in the comments below…