Snapchats from Rihanna, Jared Leto, Kylie Jenner and other personalities are now being archived for your round-the-clock viewing pleasure, thanks to a 21-year-old with an innovative streak — though without Snapchat’s cooperation.
Story Star aims to resolve the fleeting nature of Snapchat by archiving a curated selection of celebrity images and videos it has recorded off of the mobile messaging app. Because while it’s one of the world’s most popular smartphone apps, Snapchat can leave its users with some serious FOMO (fear of missing out).
Each Snapchat user’s Story lasts a scant 24 hours, making it hard to keep up unless you’re monitoring constantly. And without a verification process, finding official celebrity accounts is hit or miss. But the Story Star website and app, which launched today, will store the latest content from the aforementioned stars, as well as Snapchat influencers like Casey Neistat and Vine stars such as Nash Grier and Jerome Jarre.
“I love Snapchat and appreciate its ephemerality, but I really wanted to be able to discover and search for the type of content that is being created on Snapchat,” said Jacob Catalano, 21, who began beta-testing Story Star in March with his friend Matt Saunders, 27. “It is my attempt to bring discovery and search to mobile, first-person-perspective video.”
The site currently features Snapchat content from about 20 celebrities manually updated by its founders, but Catalano said he plans to grow that number to around 75 and, eventually, allow anyone to upload videos to, and create content with, Story Star.
Catalano has tried, without success, to pitch his idea to Snapchat, which prides itself on its evanescence. But Catalano doesn’t see a conflict between his archiving efforts and Snapchat’s blink-and-you-missed-it ethos: “What I am doing is no different from embedding an Instagram post or YouTube video,” says Catalano. “Furthermore, I give full attribution to the creators.”
Snapchat has been notoriously vigilant in disabling third-party apps to preserve content on its own platform, so it remains to be seen how long Catalano can operate without getting a takedown notice. But if his outreach efforts to influencers pay off, he could be archiving content straight from creators and not ripping photos and video footage from Snapchat.
If you’d prefer to track Snapchat updates in real time, here is a official list of celebrities posting to the mobile messaging app:
Keegan Allen LifeLoveBeautyB
Hailey Baldwin haileybisboring
Ashley Benson Benzo33
Justin Bieber rickthesizzler
Ally Brooke itsmeallyb
Miley Cyrus mileycyrus
Waka Flocka WakaFlockaveli
Ariana Grande moonlightbae
Selena Gomez SelenaGomez
Normani Hamilton moniloves31
Dinah-Jane Hansen dinahdime
Fifth Harmony fifthharmony
Gigi Hadid doublegiforce
Brody Jenner nextjenneration
Kylie Jenner KylizzleMyNizzl
Kevin Jonas kevinjonasii
Nick Jonas JickNonas
Victoria Justice victoriajustice
Jared Leto JaredLeto
Blake Lively LivelyBK
Jennifer Lopez jlobts
Austin Mahone yungmahone
Shawn Mendes shawnmendes1
Pia Mia princesspiamiap
Shay Mitchell officialshaym
Little Mix Littlemix_offic
Rihanna rihanna
Arnold Schwarzenegger arnoldschnitzel
Ryan Seacrest ryanseacrest
Cody Simpson aussiemuso
Hailee Steinfeld haiz
Steve-O steveosdick
Bella Thorne BellaThorneDAB
Meghan Trainor mtrainor22
Tyga lamboluxury