Skip to footer

Snapchat extends conversation to video

Disappearing messages no more: Snapchat updated its services to include instant messaging and video chat to keep in step with the rapidly growing mobile messaging field.

|
Snapchat
Snapchat announced it is adding video chatting and instant messaging to its mobile app.

Snapchat is letting you see your friends for more than 10 seconds.

The instant messaging app, famous for its self-destructing and no-longer-than-10-second photo messages, announced it is adding a feature that lets you instant message and video chat with fellow mobile friends. The move is the first major addition to the messaging app since it turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook, and comes on the heels of serious mobile messaging growth.

The new messaging features are ways for the social media app to extend the conversation users have on Snapchat beyond quickly disappearing snapshots.

“Until today, we felt that Snapchat was missing an important part of conversation: presence,” the Snapchat team wrote in a blog post Thursday. “There’s nothing like knowing you have the full attention of your friend while you’re chatting.”

Here’s how it works:

“Swipe right on a friend’s name in your Snapchat inbox to start chatting,” says Snapchat. “When you leave the chat screen, messages viewed by both you and your friend will be cleared – but either of you can always tap or screenshot to save anything you’d like to keep (addresses, to-do lists, etc.)!”

“We let you know when a friend is Here in your Chat so that you can give each other your full attention,” adds the messaging service. “And if you’re both Here, simply press and hold to share live video – and Chat face-to-face!”

When two friends are both online, “Here” is indicated by a blue icon that users press and hold to enable video. The service works over both cellular service and Wi-Fi.

The most recent update to Snapchat before this move was a feature called “Stories,” in which users could keep a picture on their individual accounts for up to 24 hours for any of their friends to see.

This move comes in light of explosive growth in the mobile messaging field. After Snapchat turned down Facebook’s offer, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $20 billion, added a direct-messaging feature to Instagram, and required mobile Facebook users to download its Messenger app to message on the social media site. Twitter also recently rolled out private photo messaging. Snapchat also follows moves by Apple and Google to improve mobile video chat capability through Facetime and Google Hangout.

Snapchat is also coming off a year of high-volume use. Comscore, an analytics firm, says Snapchat attracted 20 million users to its mobile application in February, up from 4.5 million users a year ago, according to the New York Times. It also supports more than 700 million messages per day.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Snapchat extends conversation to video
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2014/0501/Snapchat-extends-conversation-to-video
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe