Snapchat Snazzes Up Its Functionality

Late last week, Snapchat unveiled its latest product update — and it was jam packed with new features.

The biggest addition is text messaging functionality. In a blog post on their site, they go into a little background explaining their new addition: “But until today, we felt that Snapchat was missing an important part of conversation: presence. There’s nothing like knowing you have the full attention of your friend while you’re chatting… We could not be more thrilled to announce Chat. Swipe right on a friend’s name in your Snapchat inbox to start chatting. When you leave the chat screen, messages viewed by both you and your friend will be cleared – but either of you can always tap or screenshot to save anything you’d like to keep (addresses, to-do lists, etc.)!”

The app also revealed new video chat–if both people are online at the same time, they can instantly start video chatting. But, both have to be engaged in the conversation for it to work. As Mashable points out: “Unlike FaceTime or other video calling apps, the phone doesn’t ring and there is no “answer” button when someone initiates a video call. The video simply appears and the other user can choose whether or not to activate it on their end as well.” So it’s a bit different that other video chats out there. It’ll be interesting to see if users engage with this feature or simply default to their other video calling apps.

Overall, the app looks cleaner with the update as well. Icons look more polished and the user interface (UI) seems better thought out. What do you think? Do you use Snapchat? What do you think of latest update?

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