Snapchat hits 500m monthly users, announces new features

Popular social media platform Snapchat has reached over 500 million monthly active users, with roughly 40 per cent of its community located outside of North America and Europe.

In India, Snapchat has seen over 100 per cent (year-over-year) growth in daily active users (DAUs) in each of the last five quarters, the company announced during its third Snap Partner Summit virtually late on Thursday.

Snap also announced new features, latest updates and Augmented Reality (AR) experiences, like new AR tools and camera experiences, the next generation of Spectacles and launched ‘Story Studio’ -- a new standalone app offering powerful editing tools to creators on mobile.

“Built with Creators in mind, Story Studio will offer insights into trends happening on Snapchat. It is launching later this year on iOS and will be available for free,” the company said in a statement.

Snap also launched Creator Marketplace where brands can find and contact verified creators, starting with top AR Lens Creators and, in the future, Snap Stars and Creators on Spotlight.

“Subscribers can now send Gifts to official Snap Stars to kickstart conversations. Snap Stars earn a share of the revenue from Gifts, which are received through Story Replies and purchased via in Snapchat Tokens,” the company informed.

“Spotlight” on the web is a new destination where creators can upload video into Spotlight directly from Chrome or Safari, and anyone, even without a Snapchat account, can see the best of what’s happening.

Snap unveiled the next generation of Spectacles, its first pair of glasses that bring augmented reality to life.

Not for sale and designed for creators, Spectacles enable augmented reality creators to discover new ways to fuse creativity and utility through immersive experiences built in Lens Studio.

“Spectacles are fully integrated with Lens Studio. This powerful desktop application designed for augmented reality creators and developers is used to build and distribute Lenses across Snap’s AR platform,” the company said.

More than 170 million Snapchatters use Scan every month, and now Snapchat is adding Scan to the home camera screen.

“Scan matches what you see through the camera with relevant AR experiences,” Snap said.

With over 200 million Snapchatters engaging with AR daily, Snap has added a new round of technically-advanced and fashion-forward features that make virtual shopping and ‘try-on’ experiences that much more realistic, accurate, and easy to use.

“For the first time, friends can interact with each other through Lenses, from across the room or across the world,” Snap added.