Snapchat users can now search over 1 million public ‘stories’ on the app, in the first major update to the service following an IPO by developer Snap in February.

The stories are submitted by users and curated by a team. Since launching stories in October 2013, the feature “evolved from singular, personal perspectives to include collective narratives created by our entire community,” the company said.

Over time, these submissions “simply overwhelmed our curation team — and inspired us to create something new,” it added.

Through the new feature, Snap will also be able to create new stories using advanced machine learning.

The feature is being rolled out in select cities for now and is designed to encourage users to stick around in the app longer. It may also be useful for advertisers in the future.

Bloomberg quoted Brian Fitzgerald, an analyst at Jefferies, as saying: “Snap keeps its place as the lead innovator, with Facebook playing catch up.”

Ever since Snapchat launched its ‘stories’ feature, Facebook added a version of it to Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as its core app.