Snapchat has come up with a set of new tools which it hopes will help it wrest back the initiative lost earlier to Facebook’s Instagram. Interestingly, Snapchat also seems to be eyeing the business community with its new tools, which again could signify a change in its operational philosophy, from being a fun and frolicking app for the young to one that can also serve as a business platform.
Paperclip could be one such that seems to have a direct appeal to the businesses and advertisers. Essentially, similar to what it sounds, Paperclip will let you attach a website for your friends to refer to. User will just need to swipe up the link to open the site in Snapchat’s own internal browser.
This way, you can share any link you wish to, which can be about an event that you feel you friends will love to be associated with. Or maybe, some Snaps need further explaining, with the attached link serving just that purpose.
For businesses or advertisers, this provides the chance for them to put forth their stuff to the users directly without requiring to exit the app. The feature was so far available with only Discover content but has now been extended to Snap as well.
Among the other new features, Snapchat introduced as part of its latest update include Backdrops and Voice filters.
Of these, Backdrops will let you change the background of any Snap, or portions thereof. This will let you highlight anything that you wish to. You got to choose from a list of patterns which again changes daily so that you don’t remain stuck in the same pattern every day.
Similarly, Voice Filters will let you play around with the voice present in your Snaps. Once you have completed recording your Snap, all you need to do is click on the speaker icon and choose from the list of recorded voice samples. The voice samples are in fact in the form of characters and hence can make your Snaps really cool.
Snapchat revealed the new feature set is part of the latest update that is rolling out to Android and iOS users worldwide. It remains to be seen though how soon those starts to appear on Instagram as well.
