Snapchat plans Discover page redesign for early June

Snapchat is redesigning its Discover page, the coveted spot where media giants flock to reach Snapchat’s young users, a source familiar with the matter told VentureBeat. The new look may arrive on June 7, the source said, and is already being shared with companies who have partnered with Snapchat to appear on the section of the app.

The Discover tab will feature a new layout that eschews the page’s circular icons for a tiled feed more akin to Instagram, our source said. Snapchat didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.

Snapchat’s move to refresh its Discover feed appears to be part of the company’s broader battle for video views. Although YouTube’s dominance was relatively unchallenged for years, these days the spotlight is on Facebook and Snapchat — and both are embroiled in a fierce battle for our eyeballs.

A tiled feed a la Instagram could offer brands more ways to stand out on Snapchat, and could also draw more eyeballs to the likes of ESPN, Vox, and the Daily Mail, ultimately boosting ad revenue for the ephemeral messaging startup.

As of this past month, Snapchat reportedly serves up 10 billion video views a day. Facebook, by comparison, said in November that it sees more than 8 billion daily video views, with over 100 million hours consumed per day. And Instagram, vague as ever, recently shared that “the time people spent watching video [on the service has] increased by more than 40 percent” since October.

Two days ago, a report from Digiday said Snapchat is currently working on “an algorithm that will act as a gatekeeper between publishers and brands and their audiences.” Our source couldn’t say whether algorithmic changes will arrive in this update, however, and Snapchat hasn’t publicly acknowledged such a change. Instagram announced similar algorithmic changes two months ago.

Snapchat last revamped its app in March, when the company introduced new messaging features and “Auto-Advance Stories.” Those auto-advancing stories changed the way users watch stories in the app in a big way; users used to pick which stories to watch by hand — now they can watch all of them, one after another, in a single ongoing stream.