Snapchat Just Unveiled a New Feature

Snapchat unveiled a new feature Tuesday called “Our Story” — riffing on its “My Story” platform.

While “My Story” allows an individual to broadcast a collection of Snapchat experiences over 24 hours before they self-destruct, “Our Story” gets away from the individual experience and embraces the collective. According to Snapchat’s blog, “We built Our Story so that Snapchatters who are at the same event location can contribute Snaps to the same Story. If you can’t make it to an event, watching Our Story makes you feel like you’re right there!”

Basically, users who are at the same location can use “Our Story” to add their videos, photos, and doodles to a publicly viewable content stream. The feature is launching in conduction with this weekend’s Electric Daisy Carnival—for which Snapchat is providing free Wi-Fi so that its users can experiment with the new product.

Snapchat explains, “If you’re at Electric Daisy Carnival, simply add a Snap to “Our EDC Story” that appears in your “Send to…” page. You’ll need to turn on location services to let Snapchat know that you’re actually at the event.” Snapchat says it won’t store user location information.

The stream will be broadcast to people who aren’t at the event as well, as long as they add EDCLive on Snapchat.

Snapchat’s monetization strategy is regularly called into question, and this new feature could serve as an example of how the company might be looking to turn a profit via brands and event sponsors.