- Launches wellbeing features to support Snapchatters
- Announces new developer products such as Camera Kit and Snap Minis, as well as new Partnerships across Snap Kit, Bitmoji and Snap Games
- Announces new camera and augmented reality Lens experiences
- Announces major content deals and reveals new slate of Snap Originals
Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP) held its virtual Snap Partner Summit on 11th June 2020, announcing exciting developments for Snapchatters to look forward to. These will range from new partnerships across the Snap Kit and Snap Games, to Dynamic lenses and features to support the social and emotional wellbeing of its community.
New Camera and Augmented Reality Experiences
Snap announced new camera and augmented reality experiences for developers, creators, and Snapchatters. On average, more than 170 million Snapchatters engage with AR daily for nearly 30 times per day. Lenses, Snap’s AR product, are made by Snap’s own design team and its global creator community, with top-performing community Lenses reaching billions of views on Snapchat.
Lens Studio and SnapML
Snap is updating Lens Studio with new advanced features to push the boundaries of AR creation. Lens Studio now features SnapML, which lets any developer bring their own machine learning models to power Lenses. In addition, Lens Studio now offers Face Landmarks and Face Expressions for improved facial tracking, new Hand Gesture templates, and an updated user interface to simplify navigation within the tool.
Local Lenses
Snap is also previewing Local Lenses, which enable a persistent, shared AR world built right on top of your neighborhood. Soon, Snapchatters and their friends can step into this virtual space together to decorate nearby buildings with colorful paint and experience a new dimension of AR.
Scan
When Snapchatters “press and hold” on the camera screen, relevant, helpful Lenses are unlocked based on what they see in front of them. Snap is introducing new Scan partners: With PlantSnap, Snapchatters can identify 90% of all known plants and trees. In partnership with Dog Scanner, point the Snapchat camera to recognize almost 400 breeds. Scan can also enable compelling experiences for brands. Soon, Scan the iconic Louis Vuitton monogram to be transported into the inspiration behind their latest collection. Additionally, Snap is introducing Voice Scan, which offers Snapchatters Lens results based on voice commands. Powered by a partnership with SoundHound, press and hold on the camera screen to tell Snapchat what kind of Lens to display.
Wellbeing
Snap has announced a series of new features designed to educate and empower members of the Snapchat community to support friends who might be struggling with their own social and emotional wellbeing. This effort includes a new partnership with Headspace, a global leader in meditation and mindfulness on new tools, and premium content.
These features were informed by research conducted late last year into how Snapchatters and their friends experience mental health. We found that an overwhelming majority of Snapchatters experience feelings of stress and anxiety and that their friends are the first people they turn to when they need help, more than professionals or even their parents. They also see their friends as the most positive force in their lives — consistent with other studies that have shown that spending time with friends can be one of the most effective ways to combat feelings of loneliness and depression.
Friends Check Up
Privacy and safety are critical to helping our community feel comfortable expressing themselves freely, with their close friends. Snapchat is not designed to facilitate easy messaging from strangers — by default, you cannot receive a message from someone you have not accepted as a friend. With our community using Snapchat more than ever to stay connected to their friends and loved ones, we want to do our part to help remind and inform them about safety on Snapchat. We just launched a new safety notification that prompts Snapchatters to review their list of friends and make sure they only are friends with people they know and trust in real life.
Here For You
Snapchat’s research also informed the development of a feature we rolled out earlier than planned to help support our community during the onset of COVID-19. Here For You provides Snapchatters with expert resources when they search for topics related to their emotional and physical wellbeing, including stress related to COVID-19, anxiety, depression, domestic violence, bullying and more. As we launch these new features, content, and partnerships, we want to make it as easy as possible for Snapchatters to access them. We are creating a new Here For You Center in Snapchatters’ profiles that will be a hub for all of these different resources — and where we will continue to add new initiatives over time
New developer products and partnerships in the Snap Kit, Snap Games and Bitmoji ecosystems
Snap introduced Snap Minis, a new way for developers to bring experiences inside Snapchat while leveraging the social power of the platform. Snap Kit and Snap Games offer developers new ways to easily build with Snapchat. More than 800 apps have integrated with Snap Kit, and nearly 150 million Snapchatters are engaging with these integrations every month. Since its launch in April 2019, more than 100 million Snapchatters have played Snap Games. Snap Minis, a new developer product, are built on the same core principles and technologies as Snap Games. These new developer products and partner integrations will launch throughout 2020.
New Slate of Snap Originals
Snap announced that Disney, ESPN, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, the NBA and the NFL have expanded their commitments to deliver content for Snapchat’s Discover platform, one of the industry’s most established made-for-mobile video destinations. The multi-year deals include new Shows and Snap Originals, mobile shows created exclusively for Snapchat’s audience, along with continued production of existing original franchises such as ESPN’s “SportsCenter” on Snapchat, NBC News’ “Stay Tuned,” E! News’ “The Rundown” and MTV’s “Teen Code.” The deals also include continued delivery of up-to-the-minute highlights for key news, entertainment and sports moments.
In addition, Snap introduced a dedicated news product called Happening Now, aimed to be the fastest way for Snapchatters to consume breaking news.
The company also announced a new slate of Snap Originals set to premiere over the next year that includes unscripted series, character-driven docuseries, and scripted dramas and comedies.