Despite having “chat” in its name, Snapchat has never been a bona fide chatting application until today. The app is popular for letting users share pictures which disappear after ten seconds or less. With today’s update though the app gains Chat functionality. Users can swipe right on a contact’s name in the app to start chatting. It does have one differentiating factor which makes it stand out from the crowd.
Today’s update puts Snapchat in the same group as conventional chatting applications, including but not limited to WhatsApp, Viber and BBM. Snapchat found a novel way to make its chat feature stand out.
When the user leaves the chat screen the entire conversation between the two users is wiped. Both users will have the ability to save it by taking a screenshot or tapping to save the conversation but by default the app will not store messages once the chat session has ended.
The app also receives video chatting feature today. When both users are online in the chat interface they can simply press a button to share live video and hence chat face-to-face. This really doesn’t come as a surprise since video chatting is increasingly becoming common in crossplatform messaging applications. Snapchat’s new update is live now and can be downloaded right away.
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