Photo-messaging app Snapchat has partnered with TuneMoji to allow users to post musical Graphics Interchange Format (GIFs) in a personal chat or their story.
A TuneMoji GIFs adds a layer of music (or spoken audio) that is looped along with the GIF. TuneMoji works in a similar fashion as Giphy, wherein you are presented with a searchable database of GIFs and you can search by words or phrases or by emojis. Once you have selected the musical GIF you want, you can then choose how you want to share it, and Snapchat now pops up as an option.
This first of a kind collaboration comes after Snapchat in June opened up its developer platform ‘Snap Kit’ to all third-party developers. However, users will not be able to open Snapchat and send musical GIFs from inside the app. So, in order to send musical GIFs, users must have both TuneMoji and Snapchat on their devices.
‘We are working on closer integrations not just with Snapchat, but all its messaging partners too,’ said TuneMoji CEO James Fabricant.
Snapchat's daily active users plunged 1.5 per cent to 188 million in the second quarter of 2018 – down from 191 million in the last quarter. While the company's revenue increased 44 per cent to $262 million – compared to $182 million revenue in Q2 2017. It seems Instagram ‘Stories’ have stonewalled Snapchat's growth, and Snap is finding new ways to improve the user count.
Snap faces cutthroat competition from Facebook and Instagram that have copied some of the popular features like Stories that were first introduced by Snapchat. Also, a majority of the new digital advertising revenue is going to Facebook and Google.
The company is trying hard to bounce back and has also added new features like Visual Search, Snap Maps, links and background filters, which, according to founder Evan Spiegel, are the best strategy for overcoming imitators.
The visual search engine – a yet to be released feature – could identify objects, songs and barcodes from users’ cameras and then greet them by Amazon listings.
The feature requires you to snap a photo of an object, and then the app would extract information about sellers of the product and reviews. You would then be able to copy the Amazon link, share and send the info to friends. If the app can’t identify the product, it would respond by saying, ‘Bummer, we didn’t catch that!’
The feature sounds similar to the way Google Lens works, except that Snapchat will use third-party integrations to identify objects.