During the third partner summit, Snapchat announced a series of initiatives and agreements aimed at transforming the app user experience and providing an increasingly complete augmented reality platform for creators and developers.
The new Snapchat map and Map Layers
Fonte: Snap Inc.
First, there are new partnerships and developer tools for the Snap Kit, Games, Mini-Games and Bitmoji platforms. Snap also introduced Map Layers, a new way for partners to bring their services to the Snapchat map.
With Snap’s developer platform, partners can leverage the company’s technology to improve their products, broaden their audience, and grow their business. Snap Map helps users connect with their closest friends, find familiar places, discover new ones, and try local AR experiences with map markers.
Fonte: Snap Inc.
Map Layers is a new feature to find special experiences directly within the Snap Map born from collaboration with selected partners. The Layer created with Infatuation for example (website that suggests restaurants around the world), makes the nearby restaurants recommended by the service appear on the map, while the Ticketmaster Layer shows the upcoming concerts and matches that will take place in the area. The Ticketmaster Layer will link users directly to the new one Ticketmaster Mini, to purchase tickets for the chosen show. Finally, the Snap Layer, Memories, will show users their memories positioned on the map, to relive moments from the past and share them with friends.
The Snapchat camera everywhere
Snap Kit’s Camera Kit allows you to bring the innovative potential and capabilities of Snapchat’s camera into partner apps for an increasingly immersive experience.
This fall, to mark the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World Resort, Snap will partner with Disney PhotoPass Service to bring Snap Camera technology to Walt Disney World Resort through Camera Kit. Using the app My Disney Experience, guests will be able to transform Cinderella’s Castle with augmented reality or add augmented reality to photos and videos created with the app. A preview of this collaboration is available from today, for a limited time and only in the United States, with the new Mickey and Minnie lenses. The Lenses will be visible exclusively to Walt Disney World Resort guests starting next month.
Furthermore, starting today, users of Bumble they can send videos and use Snapchat Lenses to make the virtual dating experience more personalized. Bumble is also integrating a new Snap Kit product, Sticker Kit, to bring Bitmoji, Stickers and Gifs into their app. Sticker Kit offers developers a convenient interface to integrate Snap’s creative tools into their apps.
Games and Mini-games
The Games and Mini-Games platform gives developers the opportunity to create shared games and experiences for the global Snapchat community. Instead of building two separate apps for Android and iOS, partners can build a single Game or Mini-game that launches instantly within Snapchat, with no installation required, and at the same time earn money from Snap Ads, Snap Token or selling their own products.
Soon, Poshmark will be launching a Mini where users can participate in real-time shopping events with friends, choose their favorite products and checkout – all without leaving Snapchat. With the new Ticketmaster Mini, coming in 2021, users will be able to swipe left or right on different artists playing around the world to connect with other users who want to see the same show.
Voodoo, a former Snap Games partner, will add 5 new titles to Snapchat this year. Since its launch last fall, the French company’s first Snap Game, Aquapark.io: Multiplayer Edition, has reached nearly 45 million players worldwide.
Soon, Games and Mini-Games will be accessible by simply swiping your finger down on Snapchat’s camera. Users will be able to create and organize their own list of favorite Games and Mini-games and also see a constantly updated feed. In this way, Games and Mini-Games will be easier to discover and more quickly accessible for all users.
Last year Snap launched Bitmoji for Games to make it easier to create more engaging and personalized cross-platform experiences. Starting today, game developers can also bring Bitmoji to mobile, PC and console games through the Unity platform.
There are also new monetization tools and opportunities to support the growth of creators on Snapchat. Story Studio is Snap’s new standalone app that offers precision editing tools to create professional mobile content, directly from your smartphone. It’s a fast and fun way to make more advanced and engaging vertical videos ready to be shared directly to Snapchat. Developed with creators in mind, Story Studio will also offer insight into Snapchat trends to keep you constantly up to date. Story Studio will launch by 2021 and will be available for free for all iOS devices, and even on the web for those without a Snapchat account.
Additionally, Snap is expanding the monetization opportunities available to creators through a new feature called Gifting, which gives fans a new way to connect with their favorite creators.
Fonte: Snap Inc.
A Gift is a demonstration of support that creators receive from their most loyal fans, that I want to build in-depth personal relationships with them through direct messages, that a creator receives, and that a creator can choose to repost to create an expanded conversation around the topics they loves.
When a user sees a Snap that makes them laugh or get excited, they can purchase Snap Tokens to send a Gift and start a conversation with their favorite Snap Star. Snap Stars will be able to earn a percentage of the Gifts received through Story Replies. Gifting will start by 2021 for all Snap Stars, on Android and iOS.
The Snapchat camera redesign
Fonte: Snap Inc.
Snap brings the Scan button to the front, placing it on Snapchat’s main camera screen. Thanks to the collaboration with its partners, Snap introduces new information categories within Scan: drawing from a library of hundreds of brands, Screenshop provides shopping tips for users who scan a friend’s clothing or select a photo from Memories. Coming soon, Allrecipes will recommend recipes based on ingredients framed by Snapchat’s camera.
Scan not only easily connects users to Lenses, but will also offer tips for using Snapchat’s camera in a new way.
Instead, the Camera Shortcuts arrive today, tips on camera modes, Lenses and soundtracks that best match what Snapchat’s camera is framing.
Lens Studio improvements
There is also an update for Lens Studio, the desktop application that allows creators, developers or companies to create, publish and promote their Lenses, with advanced tools that allow creators to create Lenses dedicated to the world of gaming, education, shopping and more, and perfect them over time. Lens Studio now features Connected Lenses, which allow friends to interact in real time, whether they are in the same room or around the world.
Fonte: Snap Inc.
Snap and the LEGO group have created the first Connected Lens together, so – starting today – friends can have fun building their own LEGO brick constructions together on Snapchat.
Also, Lens Studio now delivers 3D Body Mesh, a fabric simulator and visual effects editor that make the AR experience more realistic than ever. SnapML now allows creators to import their own custom templates that analyze and create audio, so Lenses can adapt to the sound. Visual classification brings Scan’s capabilities into creators’ Lenses, allowing them to delve into more than 500 categories of objects, thus increasing the opportunities for interaction with the world around them. As the Lenses become more advanced, the new Lens Analytics it will provide creators with the information they need to create even more engaging experiences, with anonymous and aggregated data.
Try-ons based on augmented reality
Snap introduces several new try-on experiences based on augmented reality together with partners from the world of fashion: Farfetch is redesigning the world of retail using 3D Body Mesh and voice commands, allowing users to tell which items they are looking for and then try them thanks to the ‘AR. Prada is taking advantage of new gesture recognition features that allow potential buyers to signal to the camera when they want to try another item.
Fonte: Snap Inc.
Brands and companies can integrate solutions through the Snapchat camera. Estée Lauder is one of the first companies to take advantage of Snap’s AR Shopping platform tools. Through the Public Profiles for companies, each partner can establish a permanent presence on Snapchat to show their Lenses, the contents of the Highlights section and the Stories. Additionally, Public Profiles allow businesses to enable browsing, try-on experiences, and purchasing through the Shop feature, turning Snapchat into a new point of sale.
The new Creator Marketplace connects businesses with verified creators to develop AR experiences, helping them promote their presence on Snapchat, leveraging the Lens Creator community experience. In addition, Snaps allows a selection of partners to access API Lens functionality, allowing Snaps to capture their chosen moments even better. Starting today, Major League Baseball will bring live match stats directly into Lenses.
A carbon neutral agreement
Snap finally announced a multi-year agreement with Re:wild (founded by Leonardo Di Caprio), the National Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Fund to support the restoration of areas of California recently ravaged by wildfires. Specifically, Snap will work together with Re: wild to educate users on the effects of climate change on landscapes and communities, through original content and augmented reality experiences.
The agreement is based on the commitment to be a carbon neutral company announced in recent days as part of a broader strategy to protect the climate.
Snap constantly conducts research to understand what are the issues that are most dear to Gen Z and that they want to see represented on the platform: climate change and the environment are among the issues that users indicate as most urgent. Snap says that in the US, more than half of Gen Z learn about Snapchat’s Discover platform, and on average, more than 200 million users use AR on the platform every day.