Snapchat, the mobile app that lets you send photos that self-destruct, knows that photo of you duck-facing over a box of cupcakes is just not enough. Now it will let you take a short video of you stuffing your face with that cupcake, or any other weirdness you want to share temporarily with friends.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":590491,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"mobile,","session":"A"}']The company announced that it is adding self-destructing videos to its products in a blog post today, saying its users already share 50 million “snaps” or photos every day. In order to launch videos, the company reworked its user interface, allowing people to take a “snap” or a video using the same button. If you’d like to only take a picture, you just tap the app’s “shutter button.” If you want to record a video, you hold down the button.
The app is popular with teens, who like to share photos of them doing teen-things without having those pictures ending up on Facebook. Unlike Facebook, which keeps data you’ve deleted for a certain amount of time on its servers, Snapchat snaps and videos are deleted from its servers as soon as they self-destruct on the app, a spokesperson for Snapchat confirmed with VentureBeat. To put it another way, if law enforcement wanted access to past snaps or Snapchat videos, the data would no longer exist.
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That might be comforting to some teens, but it doesn’t guarantee your snaps can’t be saved. A Tumblr called “Snapchat Sluts” shows that people can take screenshots of your snaps before they self-destruct. If you couldn’t tell from the name, the Tumblr focuses on the naked side of things.
Whether or not Snapchat is working on a way to stop people from taking screenshots of your photos is unknown.
The company is otherwise rumored to be taking on a new round of funding from Benchmark Capital. Snapchat has not confirmed the funding.
Awkward teen image via Shutterstock
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