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Snapchat's got some goofy new AR features for you to try
I can finally scan all the weeds in my front yard, but do I want to?
Despite the popularity of competitors like Instagram, Snapchat's still an insanely popular messaging app. Hell, it even managed to hit one billion installs on Android before Google Messages. That doesn't mean Snap Inc. has stayed confined to developing its smartphone. Experiments like AR glasses and original programming have pushed Snapchat far beyond its original concept. With a newly-reworked iteration of Scan, the company's looking to bring AR search results to its massive fanbase.
It's tough to use Snapchat without running into Bitmoji. Even if you don't care much for its custom avatars, you'll find them everywhere throughout the app. Bitmojis are in your stickers, the Discover feed, and even your keyboard. With its latest update, Snapchat has pushed its avatars into the third dimension, though it's limited to the Snap Profile for now.
It turns out even with a shrunken user base and diminished investor enthusiasm — SNAP shares are down by more than a third since their NYSE debut in March 2017 — that Snap, Inc. still wants to carve a place for itself in the social media ecosystem. It's tried to do so by making actual camera hardware in the form of sunglasses with cameras that stream to users' Snapchat accounts. Today, the company is incorporating two cameras to its third iteration to its Spectacles.
Snapchat's fortunes may be turning around. Okay, so the glasses idea was a bust, and the company's stock has spent the last year below even the IPO price, but we millenials are really into making ourselves look like terrifying dog-human chimeras, for some reason, and we've driven the app to over a billion installs on the Play Store. (Though the platform's ubiquitous use among adult models may also explain the rising popularity.)
One of the ways Snapchat is trying to spruce up engagement on its stagnant social platform is through Snap Games, a series of multiplayer games that users can play with their friends and/or with strangers across the network. Three of them have been rolled out to users and are available to play today.
In order to fiercely compete with Snapchat, Facebook launched Stories on almost all its messaging platforms, beginning with Instagram. The feature was so popular it succeeded in dethroning its rival, which encouraged the company to release a standalone messaging app called Direct. Although the new software brought some extra features like exclusive filters, Instagram has decided to merge all functionalities into its main application.
Snapchat never loved Android, although the company behind the social network promised to fix its slow and buggy app a long time ago. It even started rolling out a completely rewritten and supposedly better version this year, but many users still complain about the subpar quality compared to the experience on iOS. Now, we've come across a hilarious new bug in the app. People using phones with display cutouts on the top right, like the Samsung Galaxy S10+, can't properly end video calls since the "end call" button sits right behind the lost part of the screen.
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- Snapchat has just posted a short blog entry formally welcoming the arrival of the app's new Android edition. Get it while it's hot!
CEO Evan Spiegel has been promising a complete rebuild of the much-maligned Snapchat Android app for what seems like an eternity — or since 2017, to be precise. Back in February, he proclaimed that the new app would be released before the end of the year, eliciting feelings of pure euphoria indifference. Finally, the new dawn of Snapchat on Android is upon us.
At the first Snap Partner Summit (yep, that's a thing), the company has unveiled a raft of new things, including 10 new Snapchat Originals shows (also a thing, apparently). Snapchat is getting into the gaming arena with 6 in-app games, and new Snap Kit partnerships with brands like Netflix and Tinder have also been announced.
Snapchat's Android redesign has been a long time in the making. Back in late 2017, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel promised a completely rebuilt Android app. The redesign could initially only be enabled with root access, though it's been possible to turn it on in the UI for many months now. Spiegel is now claiming that the rebuilt app will be fully deployed to all by the end of the year.
Stories and original content are the two pillars of any social network nowadays. After YouTube Originals, IGTV, Facebook Watch, and others, Snap Inc. is jumping into the same waters and hoping to get enough exclusive content to grip users' attention further.
Snapchat's Android redesign started cropping up for some users a few weeks ago with the 10.40 beta. By switching on "Snapchat Alpha" in settings, users were able to gain access to the new, much smoother version of the app, announced roughly a year ago in November 2017. The overhauled Android Snapchat was built from the ground up to replace the current app, which has long faced criticism for slow, choppy performance. However, not everyone was able to get it at the time. Now, tips from our readers indicate the alpha is rolling out to a wider audience.
It's been less than three months since Snap Inc. introduced its second generation Spectacles, but the company is now iterating with two new styles for its video-recording eyewear. The new designs, dubbed Nico and Veronica, look more like regular sunglasses and would pass off inconspicuously if you didn't notice the two large circles on each side.
Snap Inc hasn't been doing great, to say the least. The company's results for the first quarter of 2018 were below expectations, and now the Q2 earnings report has been released. During the period from April 1 to June 30, Snap Inc received $262 million in revenue, with a net loss of $353 million.
Snapchat introduced 'Snapcash' in 2014, as a way for users to send each other money. The feature wasn't a great idea from the start, especially when combined with Snapchat's popularity for sharing explicit photos. Now it appears Snapchat is dropping Snapcash entirely.
Snapchat still maintains a large user base, but Instagram cloning many of its features has hurt the platform's popularity a bit (the expensive glasses and poor Android app haven't helped, either). Snap Inc has experimented with interactive content, like with the addition of AR selfie games in April. According to The Information, full-on games could be coming to the mobile apps soon.
Since their release, Spectacles, Snapchat's funky, video recording sunglasses, could only export circular video. Presumably, this was to differentiate video recorded on Spectacles from other sources, to raise awareness of the product. While unique, circular video isn't particularly practical. Snap seems aware of this, as a recent update has enabled Spectacle to export video in more traditional aspect ratios.
The second generation of Snap Spectacles, Snap Inc's video-recording eyewear, will be available for purchase on Amazon beginning today. The glasses, which capture unique, circular video clips, will go on sale on Amazon today starting in the US, Canada, and the UK, with more European territories to follow "soon."
Snap Inc can't seem to turn itself around. Between threatening employees with jail time and pushing away users with the new Snapchat design, the company has had plenty of problems in recent months. Snap Inc released its Q1 earnings report yesterday, revealing lower revenue and daily active users than expected.
Back in November, Snapchat rolled out an update that, in part, sorted users' Stories feeds algorithmically, which ostensibly placed a greater emphasis on the content people actually cared to see. According to TechCrunch, though, that change has been reversed for a lot of users, with feeds appearing in reverse chronological order again.