Snapchat Goes Hard At Coachella With New Dynamic Filters

Exclusives Screw Music FansSnapchat wants to usurp Instagram as they way to share Coachella Music Festival adventure. So today it revealed a new style of Geofilters that change throughout the day to tell friends what they’re looking at.
Rather than just a generic “Coachella” illustration that can be overlaid on photos or videos all day, Snapchat has different ones for each Coachella band that are only available while they’re playing. That means the same geofenced area will get a different filter every hour or so.

These more bespoke filters could encourage users to share shots of each band they see with friends and their Story followers, not just a single pic. And since the filters can only be used if you’re actually at Coachella, they stoke the sense of hip exclusivity that’s rampant amongst the music festival’s attendees.
To add the filters, Snapchatters can just take a photo or video, and then swipe left or right on their screen while previewing them. Coachella attendees will be able to submit Snaps to the festival’s Snapchat Our Story, which the startup will curate so people at home can see what it’s like to be there.
As you can see here, the Sahara EDM rave tent filter features a neon rainbow of colors, while the nightclub-esque Yuma tent filter shows off a discoball. The camping area and even the parking lot have their own filters too.
But what’s special today is that artists like Drake and St. Vincent will have their name appear in timed geofilters.

If you think this all seems silly, maybe you’re right, but you’re probably misunderstanding a fundamental truth of Snapchat: It’s about unique experiences. An Instagram of a sunset could be an Instagram of any sunset anywhere. But a Snap of the sunset while Hozier sings “Take Me To Church”, tagged with his Coachella Stage geofilter means you were somewhere special.
When so many of the possessions that define us have been digitized, like photos and music, experience is how members of the next generation differentiate themselves.

By: Unknown On 00:33

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Why Your Favorite Snapchat Apps No Longer Work

Do Something Epic With Everfest’s Festival FinderOutside of a mobile application’s official product, there tends to exist a broader ecosystem catering the wants and unmet desires of its user community. For Instagram, there are apps to boost your followers; Tinder users could once peer into who likes them and undo their accidental swipes; and dozens Snapchat apps bloomed, allowing users to automatically save incoming photos or share items pre-recorded items from their phone’s Camera Roll.
But in the latter case, at least, those apps will be no more.
While many today are still available for download in Google and Apple’s mobile app stores, the company confirmed this week what many users have been realizing for months now – these apps will no longer work, and they’ll soon be forced to shut down entirely.
Given Snapchat’s popularity, it’s not surprising that massive numbers of third-party applications have been created, including apps like SaveSnap, Snap Sender, UploadSnap, Snap Keeper, SnapBox, Snap Save, Upload’n’Roll, Snap Up, Save for Snapchat, Snap-Hack, Snap Upload, SnapPad, Snap Up, SnapSend, the infamous Snapsaved, and many more. What is surprising, perhaps, is how long they were allowed to operate.

Snapchat never provided developers with official access to its APIs, but as the large number of third-party applications makes clear, reverse engineering access to the APIs was not too difficult. If anything, the company seemed to have been shrugging its shoulders at the existence of its growing third-party ecosystem, instead focusing on the development of its bottom-line impacting initiatives, like the launch of new features including Snapchat Stories, Our Story and Discover, for example.
But last fall, Snapchat was finally forced to pay attention to the problem as it realized the negative ramifications that came from allowing unauthorized apps to thrive. In October 2014, insecurities in a third-party app were found to be the cause for the large-scale Snapchat hack that was dubbed “The Snappening.” The hack exposed some 200,000 Snapchat photos from a service’s whose main draw to date had been its ephemeral, and therefore more private, nature.
The “Snappening” ended up having little impact on Snapchat’s growth or usage, but it certainly gave the company a black eye in the media spotlight, and it’s impossible to track how many potential new users may have shied away in light of the news.

At the time, Snapchat did little in way of apologizing to its users, essentially pointing the finger at the third-parties, instead of acknowledging how easy it made it for those apps to exist in the first place.
Now the company is doing something about it.
In an interview this week, Snapchat confirmed what many app users could already tell you: the third-party ecosystem is being shut down.
The change is a result of the company’s months-long efforts to make its APIs tougher for developers to access – something that users have begun to notice, according to App Store reviews. Especially on paid apps, you’ll find users posting complaints of error messages and other bugs, and begging for developers to fix the problems. But this time around, those developers may not be able to get their apps working again.

Snapchat explained how its initial efforts to block these apps had affected users, noting that first the user would be warned, and then, if they continued to use the app, Snapchat would lock the account.
However, the company says that the warning messages should no longer be necessary as it believes it has fortified its API to the point of being able to lock out these third-party apps for good. What’s more, Snapchat says it’s also been working with Google and Apple to try to get the apps removed from their respective app stores, citing Terms of Service violations.
Today, in fact, there are very few third-party Snapchat apps at all on Google Play, and none which claim to help you save photos or upload images from your photo gallery. Meanwhile, the iTunes App Store is still fairly full of these apps, but most no longer work we’ve found, and app store reviews confirm.
Some users feel ripped off having once paid for apps that are now broken. Their only recourse, in most cases, is going through the cumbersome refund process at the respective app stores. After all, many of the developers don’t publish contact information or support addresses on the App Store. They simply rode the wave, took users’ money, then disappeared.
Changing API Access After The Fact Is A Common Practice
Snapchat is not alone in making a delayed decision with how to approach its third-party developer community. Twitter, for instance, had a long history of retroactively revoking developer access to its various functions over the years, putting app makers out of business in the process.
LinkedIn, too, has been pulling back more on which developers will be able to use its API and how. And recently, Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been running its own crackdown on third-party apps, which confused some who thought they were being banned from WhatsApp itself thanks to unclear reports about the problem.
While the decision to shutter the broader app community could leave users frustrated, fast-growing Snapchat is likely not too concerned with their complaints.
You may think that kicking users out from apps they grew to love and then began to think of as part of their “default” experience would see those people hesitant to return the officially sanctioned app going forward. But doesn’t seem to be the usual turn of events following these kinds decisions, history has shown.

By: Unknown On 10:12

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Snapchat Now Lets You Shoot Video And Play Music At The Same Time

Snapchat has solved one of the most annoying problems with mobile video so you can finally record your dance parties, even if you’re the DJ.

The startup been experimenting for some time with ways to better integrate music into its application. Today it’s launching a new feature that allows you to record video while playing music from your phone, rather than the music pausing. You can bump jams from iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, or any other app while recording.

The feature has just rolled out to iOS with the release of Snapchat version 9.2.0, but has yet to appear in the Android version hosted now on Google Play.

By: Unknown On 06:10

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Snapchat Tries Our Stories For Locals Only

Snapchat’s newest feature could turn Our Stories into hip, visual back channels by locals for locals only. The company is currently experimenting with a version of its normally public, big event Our Stories that feature Snaps from a certain location that can only be seen by people nearby. Today it’s running one called

By: Unknown On 00:15

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Snapchat Cuts Off Sharing From Music Video App Mindie

Hackers have screwed Snapchat several times and now the startup is taking aggressive action to keep it from happening again. Yesterday, Snapchat cut off access from music video sharing app Mindie citing its security policy. The company confirmed the enforcement to me, and said it reset the Snapchat passwords of anyone who’d given Mindie their credentials. Unfortunately, that’s left a lot of confused Snapchat users locked out of their accounts until they register a new password.
While Snapchat had previously gone after rogue apps like Snapsaved that let people circumvent its screenshot warnings, Mindie is a much more mainstream, venture-backed company. While security was the reasoning here, the move also brings up the question of how Snapchat will deal with apps that let you post polished content rather than only creating snaps with its native tools.

By: Unknown On 06:35

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