Snapchat is known mostly as a messaging and photo sharing app, but now it's branching out into a new direction.

An upcoming feature, dubbed 'Discover', is the key to Snapchat's new direction and it allows users to view multimedia content from publishers, including CNN, Vice, ESPN and Warner Music with more likely to follow.

It may even be coupled with original content produced by Snapchat itself, but the key focus appears to be allowing media companies to reach Snapchat's 100 million youthful users.

Money maker

According to the New York Post the Discover feature is going to be debuted by Snapchat today and will generate revenue for both Snapchat and its multimedia partners by selling adverts next to the new media content and splitting the income.

It remains to be seen how interested Snapchat's users will actually be in tapping in to commercial media content from the app, but it's not a million miles from the Our Story feature which already allows users to view edited highlights of major sporting and other events.

The key difference there is that the content is still created by Snapchat users, so the question is whether that's a difference that will matter to people.

• Snapchat also now lets you send money.