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Snapchat is in the middle of an identity crisis
There was a time a year or so ago when, if a friend wanted to send me a meme or a funny selfie, it would be on Snapchat. But I don't remember the last time that happened; at some point Instagram became our go-to messaging app. And apparently I'm not alone: Snapchat lost as many as 3 million daily users in 2018. Meanwhile, Instagram has grown so fast over the past two years that its Stories feature alone is much bigger than Snapchat, with more than 500 million daily users. This has arguably come at Snapchat's expense. But it's not as if Snap isn't looking to turn things around. The company wants to reinvent itself by trying a bunch of different things, like augmented reality shopping, being more open and teaming up with brands such as Nike on AR workshops.
Inside Nike's DIY studio for Snapchat selfie Lenses
Snapchat's Lens Studio, which lets anyone create their own augmented reality filters, has been a big hit for the company. There are now more than 300,000 Lenses created by independent users, and those have been viewed over 35 billion times. Still, Snapchat wants Lens Studio to get even bigger, and what better way to help it do that than by teaming up with one of the biggest brands in the world: Nike. At NBA All-Star Weekend 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Nike and Snapchat built a do-it-yourself studio for people to create AR Lenses on the fly.
Snapchat lenses now officially work on dogs
Let's not kid ourselves, you've tried to use Snapchat's lenses on your dog before. Even if you've managed to make it work, Snapchat hasn't technically dog-friendly at the time. After adding lenses for cats last month, Snapchat announced that its camera will recognize dog faces just like it does humans. That means you can spend the holidays snapping better pictures of your family's pooch with animated pizza or reindeer antlers on its head.
DOJ and SEC subpoena Snap over allegedly misleading investors
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have subpoenaed Snap Inc. requesting information about its March 2017 initial public offering. In a statement to Reuters, Snap said it has responded to a government subpoena and believes that the SEC is "investigating issues related to the previously disclosed allegations asserted in a class action about our IPO disclosures."
Snapchat adds Friendship Profiles to highlight your relationships
Snapchat is introducing new Friendship Profiles that will celebrate your relationships with your closest friends. The feature will dig up some of the highlights of the conversations shared between you and your friends. Snap Inc. is also introducing new Bitmoji-centric features, including Bitmoji Stories and custom Bitmoji merchandise that will be sold through Snapchat.
Influencer Luka Sabbat sued for not shilling Spectacles on Instagram
Luka Sabbat, a social media influencer with 1.4 million Instagram followers, is being sued for failure to, well, influence. According to a lawsuit filed by PR Consulting Inc., Sabbat breached a $60,000 contract he signed to promote Snap Spectacles on -- wait for it -- Instagram. The public relations agency said that, as part of the deal, he was supposed to post three Instagram Stories and one picture on his account. But, as it turns out, Sabbat didn't fulfill his end of the deal: PR Consulting Inc. claims he only made one Instagram story and that the post he put up on his feed wasn't submitted to it for approval.
Twitch streamers are getting Snap's AR selfie filters
As part of its Snap Camera announcement, Snap Inc. has revealed a partnership with Twitch that will bring augmented reality Lenses to users of the video-streaming site. This will give Twitch streamers access to thousands of Snapchat-style selfie filters, including those made by Snap and independent Lens Studio creators. There's no need for users to have a Snapchat account, though the company is hoping to drive Twitch viewers to its mobile app by letting them unlock Lenses that their favorite streamers are "wearing" during a stream. You just have to scan a Snapcode that shows up on the big screen.
Snap is bringing augmented reality Lenses to the desktop
Fresh off its Q3 2018 earnings report, in which it broke a revenue record, Snap Inc. is making another major announcement. Meet Snap Camera, a standalone application that will bring the company's popular augmented reality filters, aka Lenses, to the desktop. Interestingly enough, the new app won't require a Snapchat login, a move Snap says is part of its vision to expand the Lens ecosystem beyond mobile.
Snap Inc has somehow broken a revenue record this quarter
Despite drops in active users, Snap has managed to break a revenue record this quarter. According to the company's third quarter results, Snap managed to increase its earnings by 43 percent from the previous year to a record $298 million. This might have something to do with the fact that the number of Snapchat users grew 5 percent compared the same quarter last year, though the daily active user (DAU) number is down 1 percent from last quarter, at 186 million.
Facebook hopes to prove AR is more than selfie filters and games
As I sit surrounded by software engineers in a conference room with no natural light, playing augmented reality games on an iPhone, I forget for a second that I'm in Seattle visiting Facebook. Not Amazon or Microsoft. Facebook, a company that's evolved from a simple social network to a full-on technology behemoth. Here, inside the company's largest engineering hub besides its Menlo Park headquarters, Facebook says people are working on many of the projects that will impact its 10-year road map and mission of "bringing the world closer together," including Games, Groups, Messenger and, of course, ads. But I'm here to talk about one particular emerging technology that the company believes will be key to its future: augmented reality.
Instagram takes on Snapchat and YouTube with IGTV
Where there's smoke, there's fire. For Instagram, that smoke recently came in the form of rumors about it launching a feature to host curated, long-form videos in its app. And well, there's fire, alright. Today, at an event in San Francisco, Instagram made IGTV official, a new standalone app geared toward creators like those on YouTube and Snapchat Discover. As expected, this is all about giving users the ability to upload videos that are longer than a minute (up to an hour). And yes, the footage is vertical, as this is intended to be a mobile-first experience. IGTV will be available on Android and iOS "in the coming days," but you can watch the longer videos starting today inside the main Instagram app.
Snapchat logins could work for other apps in the future
You might be seeing the words "Log in with Snapchat" in non-Snapchat apps in the near future. According to TechCrunch, the company is planning to launch its first full-fledged developer platform called Snapkit, which will allow third-party developers to give users the option to log into their apps with Snapchat credentials. In addition, the kit will give developers a way to host Snapchat's camera instead of having to create one that's not quite as powerful. If they choose, they can also let people use their Bitmoji avatars in their apps.
Snap's redesign slowed down user growth
This earnings season has seen the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon report unsurprisingly profitable results. As the biggest tech players continue to make an embarrassing amount of money in spite of controversy and backlash, we now get to see if smaller upstarts like Snap have had similarly successful quarters. From the looks of the company's just-released earnings report for Q1 2018, things over at Snap have not been very smooth. This quarter, it added just 2 percent new Daily Active Users (DAUs), a drop from the 5 percent increase in Q4 2017. While its overall revenue of $230.7 million is up from the same period last year, that number has dropped 19 percent since the last quarter. Snap attributed this sequential decline to its recent redesign and "seasonality."
Snap is backing away from reckless experiments and that’s okay
When Snap first started selling its video-recording glasses, the hype was real. The company had only focused on software before that and was dipping its toe into hardware with a relatively simple product. Add to that the device's limited availability via sporadic pop-up stores, and Spectacles fever spread rapidly. But hype alone cannot sustain a business. A year and a half later, with 150,000 Spectacles sold and hundreds of thousands reportedly languishing in warehouses, the furor has officially died out, apparently along with Snap's hardware ambitions.
Snapchat swaps mess for money
Snap Inc. took a major risk when it completely redesigned Snapchat a few months ago -- it's no secret that people don't like change. But after constantly struggling to add new users since going public last February, the company decided it needed to make adjustments in order to attract people and keep others coming back. The solution was to refine the app with an easier-to-use layout and to separate friends' posts from media content. Suddenly Snapchat became a more refined app. It no longer feels like an overwhelming, discombobulated mix of stories from people you know, others you don't and publishers that are trying to get your attention. And based on Snap's Q4 2017 earnings report, the move seems to be paying off.
Nobody knows if Snapchat shows are actually successful
Snapchat hasn't been coy about its obsession with making original video content. Snap Inc., its parent company, sees TV-like programming as the holy grail and key to its long-term success. The quick, raw, disappearing videos that made Snapchat popular with teens are no longer enough to keep users locked in. Especially as Instagram has started stealing its most popular features, like Stories. Snapchat won't admit it, but Facebook may have inadvertently driven its push into original programming. Conquering that world won't be easy, and right now there are more questions than answers about whether Snapchat shows are working and how viable they are.
ESPN looks to reinvent itself with a SportsCenter for Snapchat
More than three years ago, ESPN opened a 194,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art production facility known as Digital Center 2. That space was built to house five studios, including the home of its flagship show SportsCenter, which has been airing on TV since 1979. The goal from the beginning was to make the show futureproof, by laying the foundation for its studio to support incoming technologies like 4K and 8K content. It was also set up to handle the rise of social media, what with a wall made of 56 screens giving the anchors' the ability to interact with Twitter or Facebook posts from athletes in a real-time 3D environment. The Digital Center 2 brought SportsCenter into the 21st century.
Snapchat plans a big redesign to attract more users
Rounding up the collection of tech companies releasing performance results this quarter is new kid on the (trading) block Snap Inc. According to its third-ever public earnings report, Snap continues to add daily active users (DAU) at a relatively slow growth rate of 3 percent. That translates to 4.5 million new users for the app, bringing the total number to 178 million. That's a far cry from the 800 million DAU on Instagram, which saw 100 million new users in less than half a year.
Snapchat will be optimized for the Google Pixelbook
Get ready to see your snaps on a much bigger screen. Google just announced that it's working with Snap to bring a version of the popular messaging app to its newly announced Pixelbook. Snapchat for the Pixelbook will be optimized for the laptop's 12.3-inch quad HD display, so you won't have to squint to see a tiny rectangle on your screen. Details are scant on what the integration will look like just yet, but the new notebook will be available in stores on October 31st starting at $999.
Google and Snapchat team up on geofilter coding contest for teens
Snapchat is teaming up with Google's Made With Code initiative to try and encourage teenagers to get into computer science. Teens aged 13 - 18 can build a Snapchat geofilter with Google's Blockly coding system for kids, then submit it to win a trip to the TEDWomen conference in New Orleans and mentoring sessions from Google and Snapchat engineers to create a Lens, an augmented reality filter for your photos. The five finalists' Lenses will be judged at the conference for a chance to go live in the Snapchat app, along with a trip to Los Angeles for a private tour of the Snap, Inc. and Google offices.
