SNAP’S NEW SPECS
Snapchat has updated its hardware glasses and brought AR functionality to them – the new Spectacles were revealed at Snap’s annual Partner Summit (SPS) for developers.
There’s a catch, though – you can’t buy them yet. They are available only to developers to enable them to create augmented reality filters for Snapchat.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says the plan not to sell the Spectacles to the public is a way of “creating a buzz” about them before putting them on the market later. He thinks AR glasses will take another decade to go mainstream…
Elsewhere at SPS, Snapchat revealed numerous new initiates, including a wholly new app for iOS.
Story Studio is another attempt by Snapchat to make it more attractive for users to create vertical video for its Spotlight section in the main Snapchat app. This is an effort to take on TikTok by promoting the most-liked videos from users across its platform, regardless of how many followers they have.
The Story Studio will feature a lot of features to help creators make compelling short vertical videos, including access to Snapchat lenses.
Spotlight – which this year has been distributing $1m a day between the makers of the most popular videos on the platform – has been a big success so far, attracting some 125 million users in March alone and making some users nearmillionaires overnight from almost nowhere as their videos go viral.
Snapchat is also beginning to expand the use of its Scan feature with a dedicated Scan button on the main camera page of its app.
This allows developers to create lenses that can identify what’s in the image and respond to it – for example, you’ll be able to scan an avocado with the Allrecipes lens and get recipes for avocado dishes.
On top of all this, Snapchat revealed it now has more than
500 million active monthly users across the globe and continues to grow quickly.