Among the new additions that Snapchat aims to position itself on as the new wave of collaborative content begins to take shape, there is the 'Shared Stories' option. The feature will allow users to bring other Snapchatters along to add their takes and insights to their Story.
When you create a Shared Story, you'll select the people who can contribute their own Snap additions. Then the Story becomes visible to friends and friends of friends, and now much more is possible in terms of exposure while enabling a new kind of collaboration in your Snap content.

Snap explained

Shared Stories is the new version of Custom Stories, a product that, earlier, allowed Snapchatters to create a Story and add friends to view and contribute. Now, with our new and improved Shared Stories, snapchatters added to the group can add their friends as well, making it easier for the whole soccer team, camp squad or group of new coworkers to get in on the fun.

It may help Snap scale out its potential and achieve even more Snap Stories going before a wider population, potentially fuelling even more creative creation and engagement in the app.

Which, of course has been an inherent motivation on TikTok, nudging users to consume memes and new trends while at the same time contributing with their own interpretations. That dynamic in sharing has been core to the appeal of TikTok, which explains why Snap, Instagram, Pinterest, and others are now searching for more ways to entice contribution and collaboration in their similar products.

Though, as Snap points out, it's not exactly new. Custom Stories allowed for similar, but Custom Stories was more limited by location, whereas Shared Stories will allow anybody to contribute, so long as they're invited to the group.

Just like standard Snap content, Snaps sent to a Shared Story will also disappear after 24 hours. Related to security, Snap is also going to alert users if they have added someone to a Shared Story that they have blocked.
"This provides the opportunity to leave the Shared Story and ensures Snapchatters are always in total control of who they share with on our service," says the firm.

Smart by Snap and it's one of those additions that all-new sharing behaviors can be created because of it; people add people, who add more people, leading to longer streaks of contributions to Stories.
Although it may not be something that will improve the situation for brands by facilitating influencer collaborations or better community engagement through the activation of UGC, there's plenty of potential use cases and opportunity here, and it might just be another way to help up the ante on engagement with your Snap content.