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China's WeChat is mimicking Snapchat Stories, too
Snap just can't catch a break from companies imitating its signature Stories feature in their apps. WeChat, the Chinese social app giant, has introduced a Time Capsule feature whose disappearing videos will seem uncannily familiar if you've used Snapchat... or Instagram, for that matter. You can't find them in a dedicated section, but the basic concept remains: you can record a short (15-second) clip that your friends and group chat participants can watch within 24 hours.
Printer for self-destructing photos brings Snapchat to real life
Normally, you print things out to get a permanent copy. Not with Diego Trujillo Pisanty's new printer, however. His This Tape Will Self-Destruct art project coats its printouts (in this case, Cold War pictures) with glycerol and potassium salt, triggering an exothermic reaction that burns the paper within moments after you read it. Think of it as a real-world Snapchat where photos literally disappear in a puff of smoke.
Snapchat lets everyone contribute to a shared World Cup photo album
Snapchat's first Our Story collaborative photo experiment was strictly an opt-in affair where you had to add a user to see it at all. However, the ephemeral image service is now trying something much more ambitious: it's giving every user access to Brazil Final Live, a group photo album that lets sports fans share pictures themed around the World Cup match between Argentina and Germany. Snapchat tells The Verge that it's curating the images to keep them on topic, but it's otherwise taking a relatively hands-off approach; while you'll automatically see the Brazil feed in your friend list, you're not encouraged to use it.
