Snapchat has been on a roll lately introducing bigger and more creative updates to their social network. From introducing custom geofilters, to a massive overhaul in their chat system, they show no signs of slowing down. Today’s update takes video interactions a step further by allowing you to “pin” stickers and emojis to moving objects in video. The update will be rolling out to Android today and soon to iOS.
TechCrunch reports that to make the stickers track an object, you “just record a video, tap the sticker button at the top of the screen, place your sticker over the object…and long-press the sticker”. The general interaction of enabling the object tracking seems intuitive enough, but I still wonder how Snapchat will onboard users to the new feature.
Within my own group of friends, face-swapping with video on Snapchat has seen a huge increase in usage. While some are silly, like swapping each other’s faces, some get increasingly creative. I’ve seen everything from face-swapping with logos from drinks to face-swapping with presidents on various denominational notes. Although it may seem like a “silly gimmick”, the technology behind these video interactions isn’t quite as simple as it seems.
While TechCrunch wasn’t able to get a clear answer from Snapchat as to how the new motion tracking stickers feature was developed, they did get some information on the possibilities of who might have helped bring it into fruition. Having recently acquired Eitan Pilipski, VP of engineering from Vuforia which is an AR platform, TechCrunch speculates that his past work may be bringing in the needed expertise.
Image Credit: The Verge
Launching stickers that can motion track objects in video may be the first step in a line of new augmented reality features Snapchat has yet to release.
Snapchat is available for free from the iOS App Store.
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“… it may seem like a “silly gimmick”…”
Yep, that about sums up Snapchat for me, but I realize I’m probably in the minority.