Snap Partner Summit Is Coming with Big News for Snapchat

Snap Partner Summit 2020 has taken place yesterday and Snapchat representatives have announced lots of news on what’s to come for the social network: both in terms of functionalities and wellbeing as well.

We have summarized some of the most important Snap Partner Summit news for you and here they are:

1. Happening now

With lots of events happening every day all over the world, it might be difficult to keep track of everything. So Snapchat has added a new feature called “Happening now” and partnered with important news platforms from several countries, such as NBC News, ESPN, E!, Daily Mail, BuzzFeed and many more in order to create a curated section of events.

Besides this, users will get daily horoscopes and personalized weather information depending on where they live.

Snapchat Happening now

The community will also play an important role in this new feature, as there will also be curated content from users in the new section.

2. Places, Action Bar and Stories Replies

Places or Snap Map will tell you where your friends are and what they are up to. See updated from places on the map and find what’s popular with the Snapchat community- just what Foursquare was doing some years ago. And talking about Foursquare, you will also be able to read reviews people have left there and on TripAdvisor as well.

Action Bar is the new way of navigation and it depends on what you’re doing one moment at a time. Or what you’re watching.

Snapchat Action Bar

Stories Replies is a new way to keep in touch with public persons you admire. Sending them a reply can mean so much and Snapchat is filtering hate speech and bullying and only show appreciation. Snap Stars can take advantage of the new feature and turn the replies into a sticker and create a Q&A section with their followers.

Topics is yet another tool that will help users follow what they are interested in. It will show stories from all over the world, created by the Snapchat community. You can also contribute to this by adding a Topic sticker to your Snap and let everyone else see it.

3. AR Platform

Augmented reality (AR) is getting a whole new meaning for the Snapchat users, meaning that, lenses will get new functionalities.

And here they are:

  • Introducing SnapML, which is a tool that allows every developer to bring their machine learning models into Lens Studio.
  • Local lenses will allow you and your neighbours to redecorate buildings and parks around the place you live in.
  • Scan, because life can be much more interesting if you add some colour to it. And through scan you can unlock relevant lenses to what you see in front of you. Some of Snapchat partners in this are PlantScan, Dog Scanner and there are also others to come, such as Louis Vuitton or Yuka.
  • Voice Scan will let you search for lenses based on voice command.

4. New Snap Originals

Remember back in 2019 when Snapchat launched Originals? It seems that they were a success and more types of Original content are heading to Snapchat.

Let’s see some of those:

  • Unscripted:
    – Coach Kev – (Laugh Out Loud)
    Fake Up – (Mission Control Media)
    Move It – (Stellar Studios and Little Engine Productions)
  • Docuseries:
    Road Trippin’ – (Bunim/Murray Productions)
    First Person – (Hashtag Our Stories)
    Queen of Stylez – (Glass Entertainment Group)
    Life By The Horns – (21st Street Creative)
  • Scripted:
    Frogtown – (Alcon Television Group)
    Action Royale – (Portal A)
    Total Badass Wrestling – (Comedy Bang! Bang! Productions)

5. News for developers

The best parts of Snapchat are becoming now more open for developers. What does this mean?

  • Snap Minis are the tool for developers to bring their own stories and ideas in Snapchat and empower communication. Minis is a good way to tell one’s story and help them communicate with friends.
  • Bitmoji for games: you can now be the hero of the game by including your Bitmoji into action. And this is cross-platform, meaning it is available on your phone, laptop, PC or tablet.
  • Camera Kit will allow developers to bring Snapchat lenses to their apps.

This is a summary of what Snapchat has announced yesterday. If you want to check everything into more details, click here.

See also: Snapchat Can Now Share Stories to Other Apps