Global News on Snapchat: globalnews1

Snapchat has become a social media network powerhouse that has changed the way we interact with each other and share our stories. Global News is a part of that phenomenon — globalnews1 is one of the app’s estimated 200 million monthly active users.

For the uninitiated: Snapchat allows you to send self-destructing pictures and short videos privately to other users that are set to expire after one to 10 seconds. You can also post those messages to the “Stories” area — those can be viewable by everyone and last for 24 hours. All videos and images can be annotated with drawings and text overlay.

Global News was the first mainstream Canadian news organization to start using the messaging app, adding the first snap to our Story in fall 2014. Snapchat’s unique characteristics make it a fresh and new experience for both Global News and our audience, and so far the response from Snapchat users has been encouraging.

In the past months, we’ve shared behind-the-scenes footage from the newsroom and our studios along with news updates from events such as Red Bull’s Crashed Ice competition in Edmonton. We’ve also gotten your take with our regular “Snap Poll” questions based on the news of the day.

What Snapchat stories will we tell in the future? That sort of depends on you. We want this experience to be as interactive as possible, so feel free to send us a suggestion — we love to see your snaps!

If you haven’t added us already, there are two ways to do it right now:

1) Open this article on a tablet or desktop. Then open the app on your smartphone and take a picture of the image at the top of this article to automatically add us.

2) In Snapchat, go to “add friends,” then “add by username” and search for globalnews1.

Not on Snapchat? Chances are that Global News is active on your social network of choice — from Vine to LinkedIn to Tumblr to Pinterest. And of course we have multiple Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts to bring you updates from across the country.