Snapchat announced an updated version of the Stories feature on Tuesday. The updated version will now allow users to rewind through Stories. This feature was available with Instagram Stories but not with Snapchat.
Ironically, Instagram had in August not only copied Snapchat’s Stories product in most of the features but funnily enough also in name, calling its product offering Instagram Stories. This time around, Snapchat is the one that doing the replication.
In addition to enabling rewinding through stories, Snapchat also announced an added feature – “World Lenses.” The new feature offering for the rear camera, allows users to enjoy an augmented reality (AR) effects around them. So now using world lenses users can augment reality, not to the face directly, but they can impose a sleepy could or puking rainbow on their face and snowflakes or little hearts to the surroundings.
In addition to the above, Snapchat is also enabling sharing of snaps in people Stories. However, these can only be shared as private messages with the user’s friends. This again is something similar to Instagram Direct which allows users to share photos and video messages only with a private group of people connected with the users.
Snapchat’s has an impressive 150 million daily active user base that continues to grow. As a quickly rising social app, Snapchat is proving to be a challenge for Facebook’s Instagram which has been trying hard to fight off the competition from Snapchat. So while Instagram copied Stories,Facebook is also considering face filters for its photos. In the midst of all this, it wouldn’t be surprising if the social giant’s messaging tool WhatsApp also picks up on some of Snapchat’s features, including Stories.
