Snap has announced new content deals and originals, new augmented reality and scanning features, and new developer products and partnerships, with new games and personalised services.
Content deals
Snap said that Disney, ESPN, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, the NBA and the NFL have all signed multi-year deals that expand their commitments to deliver content for Snapchat’s Discover platform. The agreements include new Shows and Snap Originals, along with the continued production of existing original franchises such as ESPN’s “SportsCenter” on Snapchat, NBC News’ “Stay Tuned,” E! News’ “The Rundown” and MTV’s “Teen Code.” The deals also include the continued delivery of almost real-time highlights for key news, entertainment and sports moments.
New news service
Snap also announced the launch of a dedicated news product called Happening Now, for breaking news. The service was created in partnership with a number of news organisations, including The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Reuters, NBC News, ESPN, NowThis, E! News, BuzzFeed News and others. There will also be personalised weather from Bitmoji in partnership with AccuWeather, and horoscopes from Sanctuary. The company noted that over 125 million people watched news stories on Snapchat this year.
More Snap Originals
More Snap Originals will premiere over the next year, including unscripted series, character-driven docuseries, and scripted dramas and comedies. Snap said it has partnered with comedian and Laugh Out Loud founder/CEO Kevin Hart, writer and director Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight” and “Thirteen”), actor and producer Anthony Anderson (“black-ish”), reality television pioneers Bunim/Murray Productions, and other established production partners.
Among its Unscripted content, there will be Coach Kev (Laugh Out Loud), Fake Up (Mission Control Media) and Move It (Stellar Studios and Little Engine Productions). Among new docuseries, there will be Road Trippin’ (Bunim/Murray Productions), First Person (Hashtag Our Stories), Queen of Stylez (Glass Entertainment Group), and Life By The Horns (21st Street Creative). Among its Scripted content, Snap will show Frogtown (Alcon Television Group), Action Royale (Portal A), and Total Badass Wrestling (Comedy Bang! Bang! Productions).
The company will in addition renew Snap Originals: “Dead of Night” by Bazelevs in association with Hooked, “Face Forward” by NBCUniversal featuring an all-new AR Lens experience, and “Nikita Unfiltered” by ITV America’s Sirens Media and Complex.
More AR, including superimposed virtual worlds for friend groups
Snap also unveiled new camera and augmented reality experiences for developers, creators, and Snapchatters, noting first that over 170 million Snapchatters engage with AR daily and nearly 30 times per day on average.
The company will be updating its Lens Studio with new AR features. There will be SnapML, enabling developers to bring their own machine learning models to power Lenses. Lens Studio will now also offer Face Landmarks and Face Expressions for improved facial tracking, new Hand Gesture templates, and an updated user interface to simplify navigation within the tool. Lens Studio is also releasing a foot tracking template powered by an ML model from Wannaby that lets developers easily create Lenses that interact with feet.
The company will in addition preview Local Lenses, which enables shared AR world built on top of the user’s neighborhood. Snapchatters and friends will soon be able to step into this virtual space together to decorate nearby buildings with colourful paint, for example.
PlantSnap, Dog Scanner, Nutrition Scanner
There will also be new scanning possibilities, such as PlantSnap, identifying 90 percent of all known plants and trees. Dog Scanner recognised almost 400 breeds. An integration with Yuka later this year will power Nutrition Scanner, which will provides a rating on the quality of ingredients in many packaged foods by scanning an item’s label. There will also be a scan service for brands and Voice Scan, for voice commands. Powered by a partnership with SoundHound, users can press and hold on the camera screen to tell Snapchat what kind of Lens to display.
More developer kits, plus new Snap Minis, Bitmoji for games
Snap announced new developer products and partnerships across the Snap Kit, Snap Games and Bitmoji ecosystems, and the introduction of Snap Minis. Snap Kit and Snap Games offer developers new ways to build with Snapchat. More than 800 apps have integrated with Snap Kit, and nearly 150 million Snapchatters engage with these integrations every month. Since its launch in April 2019, more than 100 million Snapchatters have played Snap Games.
Snap Minis, a new developer product, will be a new way for developers to bring HTML5 experiences inside Snapchat on Android and iOS. Minis are designed to deeply integrate within conversations on Snapchat, so coordinating between friends is faster and easier, the company. New partnerships here are with Coachella, Headspace, Let’s Do It (Snap Inc.), Movie Tickets by Atom, Prediction Master, Saturn (for students to share and compare class schedules), and Tembo (to create flashcard decks with friends on Snapchat, to help cram for exams).
There will be a Camera Kit for developers, giving access to Snapchat’s AR capabilities and camera. Partners here include the MLB Ballpark app, Nike, Squad and Triller. The new Dynamic Lenses, an expansion of Creative Kit, will let developers bring real-time information from their app into Snapchat Lenses, making it easy for any company to build custom AR experiences for their communities. Soon, Snapchatters will be able to share lenses to Snapchat from Houseparty, Nike, Rally Road, and Yahoo! Fantasy Sports. Snap said applications for app and game developers are open.
The company said it also launched Bitmoji for Games, bringing the 3D Bitmoji avatar to third party games, making the service more personal. Game titles include Perfect Master 3D (Gismart), Scrabble GO (Scopely), SingHeads (Dream Reality Interactive), Super Brawl Universe (Nickelodeon and Playsoft), Uno! (Mattel), Voodoo, and Water Shooty (Rollic and Tiplay Studio).
Snap has also introduced new first and third-party games from new and existing partners including Bitmoji Paint (Snap Games Studio), Bumped Out (Zynga), Friend Quizzes (Game Closure), Nordeus, Quiz Party (Mojiworks), Ready Set Golf! (PikPok), Sling Racers (Madbox), Snow Time (Funday Factory), Super Snappy Bowling (NOWWA), and Voodoo.
