Snapchat To Have Video, Audio Calling And Stickers Within Its Chat Service?

It appears that Snapchat is currently testing features such as video and audio calling, as well as stickers within the its chat service environment (view the screenshots here, courtesy of XDA). To date, Snapchat works only with text or images accessed from the camera roll. Sure, a basic video calling service is already included in its chat feature, but mobile users find it hard to use because both parties have to continue pressing the display screen constantly at the same time in order to make it work.

But that is about to change, based on what Snapchat is busying itself right now. As reported by 9to5Google, the updated chat service of the company is named ChatV2. The screenshots appear to have come from the screen of a device that runs on Google’s Android mobile operating system, most likely for testing purposes for now.

Looking at the screenshots, some may be thinking that the appearance is somewhat similar to Facebook Messenger. Indeed, there are buttons for features such as photos, video calling, audio calling, and the use of emoji stickers. The existing options that can be seen on Snapchat only include text and photos. 

In just a few years, Snapchat has already managed to attract more than a couple of million users. A hundred million of this total number use the Snapchat mobile app on a daily basis. As of late last year, these Snapchat users have sent each other over 800 million images and videos during the course of a day on average. The core users of Snapchat generally consist of people with ages between 18 years old to 24 years old, so it is safe to say that the chat platform has really found a major following among members of the yuppie generation. 

One might think that Snapchat is clearly enhancing its features in order to better compete with Facebook Messenger, which has long since become more than just a chat platform in Facebook. Ever since breaking out of Facebook, the Facebook Messenger mobile app has since garnered more than 600 million users. In order to give Facebook Messenger a run for its money, it is imperative that Snapchat also try to bulk up its current features.

Features such as video calling not only further enrich the chatting experience, but they also serve to increase user engagement. Indeed, people would want to use your app more often if they constantly find something fun to do with it, and everybody agrees that videos are always fun.