With apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook’s Messenger, sharing your location with a friend is pretty straightforward. However for some reason despite introducing features such as geofilters, Snapchat has been missing a location-sharing feature, but not anymore as the developers have since announced “Snap Map”.
The concept of Snap Map is pretty straightforward: users can share their locations with their friends, although it will differ slightly from what other messenger apps are offering. For starters Snap Map will be displayed on a map and users will appear in Bitmoji form, which we guess lends itself to a bit of fun and novelty.
There will also be heat zones being displayed on the map which will show users where a lot of snaps are being taken. In a statement sent to The Verge, a Snap spokesperson said, “These Snaps are sorted using advanced machine learning techniques that aim to surface interesting Snaps that are also safe and fun for our community.”
For those who are concerned about privacy, not to worry as Snapchat claims that your location is only updated whenever you open the app. This means that you don’t have to worry about the app tracking your location as you move around and updating the map constantly, which is good to know not only in terms of privacy, but also in terms of data and battery usage. The changes should be live so fire up Snapchat if you want to check it out.