Digital Innovation Platforms
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Google’s new AMP Stories bring Snapchat-like content to mobile web

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Starting this week, publishers will be able to try out a developer preview of AMP stories, which feature swipeable slides of text, photos, graphics and videos, Google announced in a blog post.

Publishers including Vox Media, Condé Nast, Meredith and CNN were involved in the early development of the technology and have already begun creating such stories for the mobile web.

AMP stories are reminiscent of the immersive, vertical stories pioneered by Snapchat, which spurred copycat features from social-media rivals.

One down side, however, is that AMP stories don’t yet allow advertising to be incorporated. Google is in the process of building support for ads but didn’t disclose a time frame. Meanwhile, the lack of monetization on AMP stories threatens to slow its adoption among publishers.

Even though creating AMP stories won’t pay immediate dividends, several publishing executives expressed willingness to experiment with the format in the hopes of an eventual payoff.

“AMP Stories have extraordinary potential to enhance how we create mobile content,” Doug Parker, VP of digital design at Meredith told Variety. “Our team can easily create beautiful, media-rich stories that our users can now access quickly across the web.”

The AMP Stories format is available for free, open to anyone to use. More info is available at Google’s ampproject.org website.

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