Snapchat adds a new Lens that reacts to sound in addition to reacting to the facial movements of the user.
Snapchat Lens A First For The Company
The Lens is an animal mask filter with eyes that move and neon ears that pulse based on the sound that the phone picks up. The louder the sound coming from either the user or the background, the greater the movement of the mask.
The sound-sensitive Snapchat Lens is a first for the ephemeral messaging app. It joins the other recently released Lenses with awesome features, such as the sky whale Lens that uses the sky segmentation technology and the full-body AR lenses that tracks the body of the user.
Snapchat has not yet detailed its latest offering, but it is planning to introduce more Lenses with audio-sensing features in the coming weeks. The new Lens is now available on the Android and iOS Snapchat app.
Snapchat Releases Non-Skippable Ads
In other recent news, Snapchat has recently rolled out six-second commercials that appear on its Shows platform. Unlike the previous form of ads, users can't skip these ones.
As Snapchat is a free application, it relies on the revenue from advertisers on the platform. However, the old business model involving skippable ads did not prove to be sustainable. According to company insiders, users only viewed the previous ads for two seconds on average, which is unacceptable to advertisers.
The current form of commercials plays short videos that then disappear; it does not contain any links to websites. For now, it is unknown how the effectiveness of the forced-view ads can be measured.
Snapchat User Base Still Declining?
Whether or not Snapchat plans to roll over the non-skippable advertisements to other areas of the application, such as in Stories, is yet to be seen. This may drive users further away, as they have been discontent with the app as of late due to the controversial redesign in February.
A petition was even made to return Snapchat to its previous layout. The 1.2 million signatures, along with the negative feedback on social media websites, made Snapchat acknowledge the faults of the new look, and so it recently promised another redesign.
Snapchat will return the chronological order of Chats and Snaps, and the Stories and media content will be reunited. The move will essentially bring back the old Snapchat.
The new layout will be available to Snapchat users on iOS, with the Android update yet to be announced.
