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| VIEW EVENT INFORMATION: Snapchat |
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Snapchat Launches Augmented Reality Developer Platform Lens Studio |
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About the organization Snapchat:
Type: Business
Sub-Types: Website, Social Networking Agent, Picture Hosting Agent, Text Hosting Agent, Video Hosting Agent, Application Software |
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Notable Organizations: Snapchat, Techcrunch
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| Snapchat is finally opening up so outside developers can help it offer infinite augmented reality experiences beyond those it designs in-house. Today, Snap launches the Lens Studio AR developer tool for desktops so anyone can create World Lenses that place interactive, imaginary 3D objects in your photos and videos.
But brands, news publishers and developers will have to promote their own Lenses by marketing their QR Snapcodes that users scan to unlock an AR effect for 24 hours. That’s because Snapchat won’t display these Community Lenses in its camera unless businesses pay a partnered creative agency to build them a special effect and then buy Sponsored Lens ads from Snap.
The launch could vastly broaden Snapchat’s AR entertainment value, helping it to compete with Facebook’s own Camera Effects AR platform that launched to all developers early this week. Though for now the platform only lets you make World Lenses and not selfie masks, more AR toys will give Snapchat a much-needed boost to sharing and viewing at a time when user growth has slowed to a trickle in the face of Instagram’s competition.
Snap already sees one-third of its 178 million daily users play with Lenses each day for an average of 3 minutes, which adds up to 500 years of playtime with AR each day. And that’s just with the 3,000 Lenses Snap has made itself. With the opening of the platform, Snap’s VP of engineering and camera platform leader Eitan Pilipski tells me, “There’s something magical about coming back every day and finding that there’s a new experience.”
By removing its in-house AR design team as a bottleneck through agency partnerships, Snap could scale up augmented reality advertising so it doesn’t miss its quarterly revenue target again. |
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