Google tipped to be building its own take to Snapchat’s Discover feature

Everyone seems to have some sort of Snapchat Stories-like feature in its services. And it looks like Google is looking to build the same thing but with a slight twist. The focus will be on having news publishers create Snapchat-like stories to appear on its search engine. It’ll look similar to Snapchat’s Discover section that shows a mix of photos, videos, and text. According to The Wall Street Journal, it’ll be supposedly called “Stamp” with the “St” meaning stories. Not much is known about these rumoured plans but The Verge speculates it might be seen beneath the search bar, where Android users are already being shown things like recommended websites and news stories.

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Google reportedly wanted to buy Snap for US$30 billion

While it isn’t the first time it’s happened, it seems Facebook wasn’t the only one after Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc. Google reportedly wanted a piece of the incredibly popular pie and tried to buy the company for US$30 billion. According to Business Insider, Google verbally talked about the acquisition of Snapchat with the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel. Snap is denying that formal discussions happened. Google also won’t comment on the story. According to the report though, the offer was supposedly still on the table since the company’s IPO early on in March.

Whether or not there’s truth to this, Spiegel is known to like being in charge of his own company, especially with a product he started himself. It would’ve benefited Snapchat on the marketing side if they took the deal and Snapchat would’ve helped Google develop its AR technology. But in the meantime, Snap and Google do work close together. Google’s investment arm put money on Snapchat after it went public. While Snap is considered one of Google Cloud’s biggest customers and they promise to spend US$2 billion on Google’s cloud platform.

Source: GSMArena + 9to5Google

If you want to use basic Snapchat filters, you need to turn on location services

A new update to Snapchat was spotted by Redditors and it’s bringing a feature a lot of users might not want. In order to use basic filters on the app, it now requires users to turn on location services. That used to only be required for using geofilters and the speedometer but it seems it’s encroaching on the other features, too. Some users are reporting though that the augmented reality facial recognition filters still work now without the need to enable location services. Snapchat hasn’t explained the change yet but spotted at the release notes a feature that lets you “create a Story for friends in a specific location.” Perhaps this is what the update is for.

Source: The Next Web

Snapchat forces users to replace Snapcode profile pictures with Bitmoji

A new update coming to Snapchat is not sitting well with some of its users. The social network is forcing its users to put a Bitmoji avatar inside the ghost-shaped Snapcode frame instead of their profile pictures. It’s not an opt-in feature either. If you’ve ever created a Bitmoji account before, it’ll change on its own. If you haven’t it looks like you won’t be affected for now. Users have taken to Twitter to complain, some over losing their profile pictures and others to being confused about telling their friends apart because of the similar appearances of the Bitmoji. From the business end, it makes sense for Snapchat to try and promote Bitmoji after buying the company last year. That doesn’t mean its decisions still well with its users, though.

Source: The Verge