Popular social messaging app Snapchat is known for letting users send short-lived images and videos. Well, that’s changing.
Snapchat has introduced a new feature called Memories, which lets users save, search for, and reuse their Snaps and Stories. The new feature will be rolling out over the next month.
Thanks for the Snapchat Memories
Whenever you post a Snap that was is more than a day old, Snapchat will put a frame around it to make it clear that it’s from the past.
“Memories is backed up by Snapchat,” according to Snapchat’s blog post announcing the new feature. “We won’t backup any photos or videos from your Camera Roll, unless you use one to make a new Story or add it to My Eyes Only. In that case, we’ll back up only the photo or video that you used.”
My Eyes Only is password-protected. This Snapchat Memories option is designed help users avoid any awkward moments when users hand their phone to a friend or family member. Speaking of awkward, here’s the video Snapchat used to introduce Memories:
SnapSearch
Users can only search for Snaps that they’ve imported from their Snapchat camera roll. TechCrunch provided a great overview of how SnapSearch works:
All your saved photo and video Snaps plus your Stories appear in the main Memories tab. This can searched by hundreds of keywords that Snapchat will identify in the captions, emoji, stickers, dates, or locations in your Snaps. But thanks to the augmented reality talent Snapchat has been hiring lately, Memories searches can also identify objects in your content, from cats to hats to sunsets, surfing, or Hawaii.
In case you don’t know what to search for, Snapchat will show pre-made suggestions including Flashback, a TimeHop/Facebook On This Day clone that shows snaps from this date in the past. There’s also Taken Nearby, so you can find what you captured last time you were here. It uses a variable distance radius to home in on a restaurant in a dense city, or a whole school in the suburbs.
Invasion of the Olds
Snapchat Memories isn’t trying to resemble anything close to a Facebook or Twitter feed. It’s simply trying to make it easier for users to save their favorite moments captured via videos and images and upload them whenever they want.
However, this might be a feature that attract even more older users and helps Snapchat become mainstream. ComScore data (as reported by WSJ) shows that while the majority of Snapchat’s 150 million user base is still made up of millennials, nearly 38 percent of U.S. smartphone users are between ages of 25 and 34 while 14 percent are age 35 or older.
More older people, plus more Snapchat ads, could mean more brands and marketers will soon be invading Snapchat as well.
Image Credit: Screenshot taken by author of Snapchat’s “Introducing Memories” video.
