Over the past two decades, social networks have deeply changed our lives and Snapchat is an example to get ready for the Evolution into Web3.
The flagship video calls and chat features previously only available on Snapchat’s mobile app will now be available on Chrome, with other browsers coming soon. Initially, the new feature will be available to Snapchat+ subscribers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, as well as Snapchatters in Australia and New Zealand. It is expected that Snap will eventually make the web browser version available to all Snapchat users.
The program is still beginning, but by late summer it will be available to use on your desktop. And along with might be the soon-to-come Snapchat NFT Filters, which came up in a recent leak showing an NFT test that seems to be part of a mini-product sprint at Snap.
It will be a range of AR filters that the users can apply to shots and videos, which they can then share with their network of contacts. Yet another social network to adopt blockchain technology, and yet another proof of a field that even in times of economic crisis keeps being a temptation for everyone.
Social networks have had such a deep effect on how we use the web that they have changed the paradigms we were used to until a few years ago. Social networks now find themselves adopting technologies and philosophies that can take the online population to additional ways of experiencing the Web.
Snapchat, the platform created by Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel, and Reggie Brown, is developing a system that will let users convert Non-Fungible Personal Tokens into AR filters and animations that can be put on their photos in the way of three-dimensional filters.
Although in its early stage, the project does suggest future progress. We don’t know how Snapchat is planning to focus its business around the emerging AR on-chain—the technology that adds virtual content in the real world—but we can imagine future evolutions and relevant efforts toward monetization. Just to give one example, at Facebook’s Web3 breakthrough, Stephane Kasriel, the head of Commerce & Financial Technologies at Meta, foresaw returns amounting to on the order of $3 trillion over 10 years.
And if Facebook is mainly investing in Virtual Reality technology and Metaverse, Snapchat is going for a Web3 turn by going all in on Augmented Reality, at least as far as we know so far. A selected group of users will serve as beta testers for the current testing phase, following a well-established practice. The feature is expected to be available to anyone in a very short time, according to the company’s plans.
We have witnessed this practice in the Instagram case, with the photo social network sending forward a small number of users recently to try out the first NFT features. A normal time of development that the Meta company will definitely capitalize on in order to transfer some of the new features to Facebook too.
As we know, Reddit is well on its way with its NFT ecosystem, strong in its cooperation with Polygon—an increasingly environmentally sustainable chain that is always involved wherever there is a business opportunity. Polygon Matic is leading Reddit’s on-chain evolution together with Ethereum, the latter player in Twitter accounts connected to cryptocurrency wallets.
With this launch, it’s clear that Snapchat is trying to stay ahead of the social media game and get into the NFT and crypto craze. And with this leak coming just days after Snapchat announced its premium membership, it’s clear that Snap also wants investors to know that they’re on the ball and working on more ideas to bolster the company’s growth and revenue.
Snapchat picked an interesting time to enter the world of non-fungible-tokens, considering that the NFT hype has died down somewhat since 2021. However, most other competitors are really focusing on VR, and with the expected boom to come in AR with the arrival of AR Glasses, Snapchat’s foray into NFTs might actually be more significant than it seems.
