Among the first social networks to believe in some way in the so-called augmented reality, that is, in the addition of virtual objects to images shared through the smartphone camera, Snapchat continues to focus strongly on this issue. All the more so now that everyone is trying to focus strongly on this issue.
During the Partner Summit 2022, the company founded by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown anticipated the news that will arrive on the platform in the coming months, insisting (with a pleasant pun) on Back to Reality concept.
The arrival of the Pixy drone
Above all, Spiegel showed what has been called a “flying camera” (a drone, in short) called Pixy: it is in pocket format and works autonomously, without the need for controllers or complicated set-ups. As explained, “fly a few meters above the users and take photos and videos and then land on the palm of your hand “and” all the material is downloaded and saved in your Snapchat memories “.
Yes: remember a little Black Mirror or the disturbing e ubiquitous drones from the film The Circlebut for the time being it will only be available in the US and France and only “while supplies last”.
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New Shopping Lenses
At the center of it all are what snapchatters know as Lenses, that is (simplifying) the filters that allow you to alter the reality of what is framed through the camera: from January 2021 to today, more than 250 million people have used them for shopping. Such as? To try something they wanted to buy, for example: Zenni Optical’s AR (augmented reality) Lenses have been used over 60 million times to virtually wear a pair of glasses before finalizing the purchase. The idea is of improve the way companies can showcase their products to consumers, and according to Snapchat “Lenses that take advantage of our true-size technology (which adapts products to the shape of the body, ed) get a 42% higher return on ad spend than Lenses that do not.”
Given the numbers, you understand why the Announcements announced mainly concern this aspect. They are basically 3:
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Snap 3D Asset Managerwhich should speed up and simplify the creation of shopping experiences in AR, with brands that will be able to request 3D models for any product in the catalog;
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a new Lens optimized thanks to artificial intelligencewhich will allow people to try on clothing more easily;
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a new Dress Up sectionwith the best of augmented reality fashion, all in one place.
Additionally, business partners (companies that make deals with Snapchat, that is) will be given the opportunity to use the Snap-camera for clothing testing directly within their apps or on their sites, thanks to the Camera Kit for augmented reality shopping.
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Snapchat numbers
The Camera Kit is exactly what allows brands to be present on Snapchat in practice: for example, Samsung used it to integrate the Lenses directly into the Galaxy A’s main camera, and those who own one of these smartphones have used the Lenses more than a billion times since.
Which seem like a lot (and in fact they are) but they are not many: overall and around the world, developers have created more than 2.5 million different Lenses that have been viewed more than 5 trillion times. Impressive numbers, likely to grow even more with the arrival of Lens Cloud, described as “a collection of free services that greatly expand the variety of what developers can achieve in AR”, and with the use of ray tracing within Lens Studiowhich will undoubtedly make the elements in augmented reality even more similar to the real ones.
Worldwide, Snapchat has over 600 million monthly active users, and in 2021 Snapchatters shared more than 6 billion content from partner apps like Spotify or Twitter. And also earned money, a lot thanks to the so-called social gaming, that is simple video games designed specifically to exploit the peculiarities of the platform: according to what has been explained, “more than a third of our partners (in the gaming sector, ed) have earned over a million dollars”.