The app that made throwing up rainbows, and face swapping popular is now looking to change how people use emojis. Snapchat has introduced their new feature 3d Stickers. With it, an emoji will now move throughout videos on a path decided by the user. With Snapchat constantly inventing fun features for photos and videos, social media giants Facebook and Twitter can’t be too far off from introducing their own features.
Snapchat Changing the Emoji
With 3d Stickers, Snapchat is now hoping to make videos more entertaining with the help of emojis. Using the new feature is simple. Users create a video and then drag an emoji over an object. Snapchat then tracks the object the emoji is attached to. Once tracked the emoji will move with that object. With Snapchat, you can place a plane emoji over a bird as it flies by, or place a sunglasses emoji over your eyes as you walk away. Users can also place multiple emojis within the same video.
Facebook and Their Emotions
Much like Snapchat, Facebook is no stranger to change. The social media king is always looking for ways to reinvent itself. One strategy Facebook uses is buying up their competition to make use of their unique properties. Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, and tried but failed to purchase Snapchat in 2013 for $3 billion. The most recent change to Facebook was the introduction of the reaction buttons back in February. The buttons joined the like button, and gave users more options on how to react to content. Each reaction is represented by its own emoji. Facebook has no plans at the moment to expand on the reaction buttons, but they are currently working on a live-streaming video function and a digital assistant.
Twitter Falling Behind
Twitter just turned ten this year, and the latest change to the site looks to change up the timeline. Taking a page from the book of Facebook and Instagram, Twitter will now use an algorithm to decide what users see based on their site usage. Instead of Tweets popping up as they are posted, users will now see Tweets that Twitter believes they are actually interested in. On the emoji side of things, Twitter recently changed their star button into a heart. They state the new button conveys more emotion for users when they favorite a Tweet. With the site’s popularity fading, it’ll be interesting to see what changes they make in the future.
