Snapchat has unveiled a slew of new offerings and updates to its platform at its Partner Summit, presented at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California.
The summit brought together the platform’s community of partners, creators, and developers, as well as the business’ leaders including its CEO, Evan Spiegel.
“We feel incredibly fortunate to serve over 850 million Snapchatters around the world, including the 100 million who have joined us since our last Partner Summit,” he said.
A New and Simple Snapchat
The platform testing a new and simplified Snapchat that organises the app around communicating with friends, using the camera, and watching Snaps from friends and the broader Snapchat community, including creators and publishers.
The social media giant been working on unifying Stories and Spotlight, and with this new and simplified design, Snapchatters will have a more personal and relevant viewing experience. The update also has the potential to help creators and publisher partners find new audiences across new surfaces and support Snap’s advertising business over the long-term.
How Simple Snapchat works:
Open to Camera: As always, when Snapchatters open the app, they’ll immediately see their world through the camera, so they can easily take and share a Snap.
Conversations all in one place: On the left, is Chat – home to all of Snapchatters’ conversations. Stories are now at the top of conversations, because sharing and replying to Stories is fundamental to communication.
Snapchatters can also hop into Snap Map from a button at the bottom of this tab, making it easy to translate conversations into real-world plans.
Personalised content: On the right, Snapchatters will find a new viewing experience that combines Stories and Spotlight videos. It’s powered by Snap’s first ever unified recommendation system – that makes for the most personalised experience yet.
Videos from friends are prioritised and recommendations are based on what Snapchatters love sharing with their community, what’s trending among their circle, and of course, what they love to watch.
Simple Snapchat
New AI and Chat Features to Spark Conversation
AI has transformed the way pictures are created, learn about the world, and communicate with friends. Snapchat has introduced new AI-enabled features to spark conversations, make great Snaps, and discover new things.
New AI Lense
The augmented reality technology Snap pioneered 9 years ago transformed the way users express themselves, visually. Last year, Snap made Lenses even better with AI, revolutionising the way Snapchatters express themselves again. Snapchatters will now be able to try the latest AI Lens that offers a glimpse of what they’ll look like in the future.
More AI Memories to share with friends
With a swipe up from the Camera, Snapchatters can view Memories in full screen, and see collages and video mashups of their favorites.
And now, for Snapchat+ subscribers, AI will even act as a personal creative director adding captions and Lenses to Memories, giving them a whole new spin. Subscribers will also see totally new AI Snaps to share with friends.
These AI Snaps rely on a new feature called My Selfie that lets Snapchatters create and manage their Snap AI identity. After uploading a few selfies, Snapchatters will be able to see themselves in AI-generated images, or even in Snaps with friends who have also opted-in.
AI Memories
Problem solve with My AI
My AI will now be better at problem solving Snaps and will be able to interpret Snaps of parking signs, translate menus in a foreign language, or help identify unique plants.
Snapchat has also introduced additional communication features that help you stay connected and express your style.
My AI Snaps
Stay connected from afar
Snapchat can show local times zones in chat to make it easier to connect with friends across the world, and improved HD video calls, and Snap Mail, a feature that lets you leave a friend a Snap if they don’t answer, are there to help you stay in touch.
Showcase your style
New accessories for Bitmoji, your digital cartoon mini-me, will help users customise their fit. Look out for new Snap-yellow Crocs launching today, and get ready to sport a bag from their upcoming partnership with Prada and Miu Miu.
Bitmoji
New Ways for Creators to Build a Community & Find Success
Relationships are at the core of every experience on Snapchat. So naturally, relationships are at the heart of the content experience – whether you’re the one making Snaps, or watching videos created by the community.
Over the last year, the number of creators posting publicly has more than tripled, with creators posting nearly 10 billion Snaps to their Stories, getting trillions of views. The social media giant continuing to make it even easier for creators to facilitate relationships with friends and fans, create Snaps, and get rewarded while being themselves.
Replies and question sticker features
New Tools for Creators to Grow their Community
A new simplified profile design allows Snapchatters 16 and older to easily toggle between their personal and public accounts. If they want to connect with their real friends – personal. And if they choose to reach a wider audience – public. For Snapchatters aged 16 and 17, the highest privacy safety settings are on by default.
Creators are now able to further customise their public profiles to give new viewers a sense of the Snaps they create by pinning their favourite Snaps to the top of their public profile.
Templates also make it easier to create and share great Snaps using photos and videos from Memories and Camera Roll. Stay in the moment and post a recap of your once-in-a-lifetime vacation when you’re ready. Templates all come soundtracked with music from top and emerging artists.
Every day, there are nearly 15 billion interactions between creators and their fans on Snapchat. With the Replies and Quoting feature, Snapchatters can reply directly to, or comment publicly on a creator’s Snap. Now, creators can then turn that message into a photo and video response, allowing for deeper engagement with their audience.
Public profile
More Ways for Creators to Find Success
The social media giant’s Snap Star Collab Studio helps accelerate partnerships between creators and brands. Through their preferred partners and new self-serve tools, creators can now choose to show off their engagement and demographic data to brands. And soon, they’ll be able to share this information directly with any advertiser on Snapchat.
Creators can be rewarded while being their authentic selves across Stories and Spotlight. Also, Snap’s full suite of creative tools, like Lenses and Sounds, has helped support an ecosystem where there are lots of opportunities to build audiences through self-expression.
Snap AR: Enhancing In-App and Real World Experiences
Snapchat’s partners continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with augmented reality, bringing to life the things you care about – from art and science, to sports and music, beauty and shopping, and everything in between. Today, over 300 million Snapchatters engage with augmented reality every day on average.
Snapchat Cam Expanding to More Venues
During Super Bowl LVIII, the NFL took over the jumbotron at the stadium with Snapchat Cam, powered by Camera Kit technology, which lets partners bring AR into their own applications, websites, and in the real world.
Snapchat has partnered to bring Snapchat Cam to more than 50 venues, teams, artists, and broadcast partners, like the Indiana Fever at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
Super Bowl Lens
Lip Syncing Lens with Eminem
Snapchat is also launching a Lip Syncing Lens with Eminem in celebration of his new song Fuel. Soon this visual Lens experience will support thousands of tracks from Snapchat’s Sounds library so you can take Snaps rocking out in real time or apply the Lens to bring your Memories to life, all with the confidence you’ll never miss a beat.
Snaps with the lip syncing Lens have been shared more than 100 million times – it’s the perfect way to strike up a conversation.
NYX Beauty Bestie
NYX Professional Makeup recently introduced NYX Beauty Bestie, which uses AR and AI to make mastering a handful of looks fun, mess-free, and easy to show your friends in a Snap.
Snap has introduced an advanced version of this Lens that uses generative AI to recommend endless looks tailored to your unique features.
Nyx Beauty Beastie
Introducing New AI-Powered Tools in Lens Studio, Empowering Anyone to Create AR
Through Lens Studio, Snap’s AR authoring tool, more than 375,000 creators, developers, and teams have published over 4 million Lenses on Snapchat, websites, mobile apps, and Snap’s AR glasses Spectacles.
Snapchat is introducing new features and harnessing the power of generative AI to help any creative person – from hobbyists to professional development teams – boost their productivity and bring their imagination to life through AR.
The social media giant announcing a new slate of AI-powered features that make Lens Studio an even more versatile and accessible platform.
Making AR Creation More Approachable
Easy Lens makes it possible to build Lenses in a matter of minutes, just by typing what you want to create. Quickly experiment with new ideas like Halloween costumes and Lenses to celebrate back to school.
Through a chat interface, Easy Lens uses large language models to connect with Lens Studio components and build Lenses in front of your eyes.
This tool enables creators at nearly any ability level to make their own Lenses, while also empowering advanced creators to prototype and experiment quickly. Snapchat launching in beta with select creators starting today.
New GenAI Suite Features
The social media giant also adding new tools to its GenAI Suite, supercharging AR creation. The GenAI Suite handles all the complexity of working with machine learning models – the data processing, training and optimisation – so creators can focus on turning their imagination into reality.
Now, through the Animation Library, creators choose from hundreds of high-quality movements. Animation Blending lets creators stitch multiple animation clips together to make movements look smooth.
Body Morph generates full 3D characters, costumes, and outfits through a text or image prompt. And finally, Icon Generation provides creators with images to represent their Lens on Snapchat, making it easier for their Lenses to be discovered by its global community.
Soon, Snapchat add even more GenAI-powered features to Lens Studio. The social media giant make it possible to generate an animation through a simple description, bringing Bitmoji to life.
The platform also support Video to 3D Gaussian Splats, letting creators bring 3D renderings of real-world objects into Lenses. By taking a short video of an object and uploading it to Lens Studio, the object will be reconstructed into a photorealistic 3D asset.
