By Grace Kelley and Amanda Brown
The twenty first century is booming with a wide variety of social networks: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the most popular. However, Snapchat is quickly making its way to the top as a messaging app with many new features, including the most recent lenses, that has everyone talking.
Snapchat launched in 2011, beginning as a simple messaging app where friends could send photos or videos for up to 10 seconds. It works on both the iOS and Android systems. The app can be downloaded through the App Store on any Apple product or through Google Play on any Android device. Now, it is continuously among the ten most downloaded apps in the App Store.
It is estimated that 700 million snapchats are sent everyday.
You can take the photo, add a few doodles, a geotag, or a filter, and then send it away to chosen friends. WHS senior Caroline Reynolds comments, “The geotags are what I look forward to when I am going to drive anywhere.” Snapchat also has enabled people to add slow motion, reverse, or fast motion effects to videos. After opening the snapchat, the receiver has a certain amount of time to look at it and then it disappears forever, unless less screenshotted. You can also post snapchats to your story, which will be available to all your friends to look at for twenty four hours.
In a recent update, Snapchat introduced lenses. They were launched in September of 2015. Simply put, they are a new, creative filter for selfies. “Their something fun and different than just sending a normal picture,” WHS freshman Julianne O’Toole says. Using both the front or back facing camera, someone can put a creative animation on their face.
To use the lenses, first a user opens up the camera and presses down on the face they want the filter to appear on. Snapchat momentarily scans the face, and then the lens options will appear. Swiping through, someone can find a wide variety of options, such as a dog that can lick the camera or someone’s lips appearing as their eyes.
Occasionally, there are action prompts that may appear, such as “Raise Your Eyebrows” or “Open Your Mouth.” This allows the animation to change or start an action, such as when a user opens their mouth while using the unicorn lens and starts to puke rainbows.
The lenses were an immediate hit for all Snapchat users. Instantly, videos using the lenses were sent back and forth and showed up on everyone’s stories. Celebrities like Ashley Benson, Kylie Jenner, and Jessica Alba are all huge fans of the lenses.
There are free lenses that are updated everyday. New ones or popular ones from the past become available as old ones are filtered out. “I only wish Snapchat would release more new ones each day; ones like the face swap are straight up brilliant, but I love getting the use newer ones too,” WHS sophomore Jackie Latimer comments. The Lens Store as created to allow users to buy lenses so that they could keep them forever. The lenses someone purchased would be found at the end of all the available free ones. After January 8th, 2016, the Lens Store was closed.
The lenses are customized for particular events, as well. Every holiday, as customized lens will appear that resembles a character or figure that represents that particular holiday. On St. Patrick’s, a leprechaun that could throw gold coins appeared, and the Easter Bunny showed up on Easter.
Many companies have began using the lenses as a form of advertisement that sponsor TV shows, music, and new products. Movies have lenses that transform you into the main character to advertise the release. Burger King had a lens with raining hot dogs to broadcast the new addition of hot dogs to their menu.
Even sports teams joined in on the fun. During the superbowl, a user could choose to have a lens paint their face blue or orange depending on which team the user was rooting for. On opening day for all teams of the MLB, lenses with eye black that read “Opening Day” and a baseball cap with the name of a team appeared depending on your location: if you were in Massachusetts, the Red Sox logo showed on top of the cap.
Snapchat lenses became an instant hit in the original update and are continuously getting popular. Now, millions of snaps are sent daily using any one of the lens options. The hot trend is always updated to make is more appealing for everyone.
Sources:
http://www.dailydot.com/technology/new-snapchat-selfie-lenses/
=)19 • Jun 10, 2016 at 1:50 pm
#snapchatrox
Good writing.
Let’s see what Snapchat becomes in a couple of years. I can’t wait for any new/ better features that are added to Snapchat!