Snapchat 2.0 : the latest update

Sailing in the rough, ever-changing currents of today’s technology isn’t easy. And I am not talking about us; it’s the apps who are vying with each other to score our maximum attention. New acquisitions, revised versions, improved features all seem like a rat race between social networking sites like Facebook and Snapchat.

When Snapchat was launched in 2012, it wasn’t seen as posing any serious threat to Facebook’s domination and till the date, Facebook is comfortably enjoying success riding high on more than a billion active users. But Snapchat is closing in. With 100 million active users and 7 billion daily video views, Snapchat is leaving no stone unturned to gain more ground.

The self-destructing photo and video sharing service on Tuesday unveiled a number of new features that make its messaging services significantly more refined. Messaging was always at the backseat during Snapping. Chat 2.0, as the new update is called brings it to the driver seat.

The new version lets you make voice calls and send audio and video messages within Chat, and it has its own private video-call service, in which users can choose who they want to talk to and start shooting video. Each guest can hum in with his or her own audio or video response, or simply text back. In addition, there are new stickers as well that users can add to their messages, and an autoplay option for Snapchat Stories when you finish a Story, the next one begins automatically — simply swipe to skip ahead, or pull down to exit!

Social media networks are toiling hard to dominate the digital arena. This latest move by Snapchat reflects the idea of creating an in-app ecosystem designed to keep users inside Snapchat for as long as possible. Make a call or text a friend or read the news - you can do it all. And Snapchat is not the first one to try something like this. In China, Tencent’s WeChat and Facebook Messenger with its app-within-an-app model—you can book a Lyft or an Uber from Facebook Messenger, talk to businesses, track packages you’ve ordered, and even eventually interact with Facebook M, an artificial-intelligence service- are already offering an all-service platform to its customers.