Snapchat announces a host of new features for businesses, creators and users. The goal? Counter the dominance of Instagram and Facebook.
For any social network, from the smallest to the largest, the references are undoubtedly Facebook and Instagram, which are also part of the same group chaired by Mark Zuckerberg, the famous founder of Facebook. The two socials are also taken as reference by Snapchat, the platform that has brought to the forefront the "Stories", those contents visible only for 24 hours.
At the Snap Partner Summit 2021 yesterday, which like almost all the events of recent months was held in videoconference due to pandemic, the company that owns Snapchat - Snap, in fact - has outlined a series of innovations that aim to increase the popularity of the platform among content creators, companies and developers, to contrast more vigorously the dominance of Instagram and Facebook. Also coming out of the same event was the new Story Studio app, which will allow creators to produce content similar to what made TikTok a worldwide phenomenon.
Snapchat's new features
One of the first changes Snapchat plans to introduce in the near future concerns Scan, the augmented reality scanning tool introduced in 2019 following a deal with Scan.me, one of the most prominent startups in the industry.
The intention is to bring Scan to the main screen of the application so as to increase the number of users who use this feature, a number that is already very high anyway: more than 170 million use it in fact every month.
In addition to this reorganization of the interface, Snapchat is preparing to introduce within Scan a new feature known as Screenshop that will provide advice on purchases the moment an object is scanned on the application. Along with this, Scan will also show tips on recipes to make with the food that should be framed, recipes that will come from the huge database of Allrecipes.
Finally, the camera will become even smarter, increasing its ability to suggest shooting modes and soundtracks to enrich content based on what the software recognizes in the shot. Deployment of most of these new features will start as early as the next few hours.
Snapchat's numbers
The Snap Partner Summit 2021 event also brought to light some Snapchat numbers. The social platform has reached and surpassed the 500 million monthly active user mark, with 40% of its users living outside of Europe and North America.
New results in India: in a year-over-year comparison, the number of daily active users on Snapchat grew by 100%.