The makers of Snapchat, Snap Inc. held their Snap Partner Summit on 11th June 2020, and they announced a lot of features that are planned for release in 2020. These include wellbeing features to support Snapchatters, new developer products such as Camera Kit and Snap Minis and new camera and augmented reality Lens experiences.
As part of its new AR experiences, they announced two new features, Local Lenses and Scan. With Scan, Snapchatters can multiple objects in their surroundings by scanning them with the snapchat camera. They have partnered with PlantSnap, Dog Scanner, SoundHound and more to help identify objects like plants and trees, dog breeds and more.
Local Lenses is a persistent AR feature where snapchatters and their friends can create virtual AR worlds and decorate nearby buildings with colorful paint.
Snapchat will soon introduce a Friends Check Up feature in their app which will notify the user from time to time to review their list of friends and make sure they only are friends with people they know and trust in real life. The second Wellbeing-focused feature is called “Here For You”. Snapchat will soon provide their users with resources on topics like emotional and physical wellbeing, anxiety, depression, etc.
They also introduced new features for developer products, namely – Snap Kit, Snap Games and Bitmoji ecosystems. Snap Kit and Snap Games offer developers new ways to easily build with Snapchat. Snap Minis are built on the same core principles and technologies as Snap Games and these will launch throughout 2020.