November 30, 2017
Snapchat is undergoing an extensive app re-design, billed its ‘biggest redesign in years’, in a bid to keep their audience engaged, attract new users & regain their position in the social platform battle. This will see a redesigned user interface, making the social platform easier to use, and ultimately more engaging.
As part of this re-design, Snapchat have introduced bespoke, contextual filters to their filter carousel options, tailored to the subject matter you’re snapping. For instance, if you’re snapping your dog, you would unlock the pet-themed ‘it’s a pawty!’ filter, or if you’re snapping food, there’s an aptly named ‘nomz!’ or ‘what diet!’ filter. These filters will automatically populate in your carousel when you take your snaps. As well as food & pets, the categories include various sports, beaches & concerts. The filters rely on an object-recognition patent, granted to Snapchat earlier this year in July.
This comes as a follow-up to Snapchat’s popular “smart filters”, which added the time, temperature & speed to your Snaps, and the fun location based overlays.
Furthermore, to add to their redesign efforts, Snapchat will separate photos & messages posted by friends, from professional content produced by influencers & celebrities. Snapchat believe this will create a more personal experience on the platform, and “separate the social from the media”, as quoted by Evan Spiegel, the co-founder of Snapchat. This acts as a challenge to Facebook’s approach of mixing your friends posts with news headlines on your timeline. Snapchat want to make it easier to find the people you contact every day, as opposed to people whose stories you occasionally interact with.
Overall, the object recognition filter feature definitely look like an aspect of Snapchat advertisers could be getting on board with, particularly if the filters can recognise specific products & businesses.
Hopefully the transformation have a positive outcome for Snapchat, to make the platform a more personalised content service & get them back into the realm of top performing social platforms.