Minis Are Here, Miniature Third-Party Apps In Snapchat
Snapchat Minis, bite-sized third party-apps built within Snapchat rolled out on Monday. Snapchat first previewed Minis, a lightweight, built on HTML at the 2020 Partner Summit back last month.
Four out of seven Minis debuts across the platform. These mini-apps are going live:
Meditation tool Headspace, studying collaboration tool by Tembo, an interactive messaging tool Prediction Master and Let’s do it, a mini-app by Snap.
Other minis apps -festival trip planning by Coachella, Atom’s movie ticketing, and student’s schedule planner Saturn are yet to go live.
The Easiest Way To Meditate Is With Headspace Mini
Headspace mini is a part of the initiative “to help support the mental health and emotional wellbeing of SnapChatters, said a Snap spokesperson.
Why it matters
The user base of Snapchat is one of the youngest on the social. Media as it reaches more under 30 years old who are coping up with missed schools, job loss, and socialization in the pandemic.
Details
Users can access minis within the chat and can also check-in the sessions with friends. Users can choose from the six meditation sessions of three-four minutes. According to research conducted by Snapchat, late last year reveals that young audience consults friends first about mental health issues over parents. This new tool is even more crucial at present as it will help users (especially the young audience) to deal with a range of mental challenges in the pandemic. A Headspace spokesperson said in an email to The Verge,
“By putting these useful resources front and center where friends already meet and share, we believe Snapchat can play a unique role in empowering friends to help each other through difficult times.”
Image Credit: Hindustan Times Tech
Will It Replicate WeChat Success?
Even though it’s a new and fresh concept in the U.K and the U.S, this mini-App model is famous in Asian Markets. For instance, Tencent’s WeChat has over 1 million mini-app programs that allow users to perform various tasks. Also, mobile payment services Paytm and PhonePe in India has rolled out several services like flight booking, movie tickets, or ordering a cab.
Snapchat has said previously that Tencent, an investor app in L.A influenced it to replicate the WeChat-style super app. It is a win-win situation for both parties-Snapchat and developers who are making the mini-apps. Snapchat can boost user engagement and developers can access a whole new set of audiences. Facebook, last month, had a little success over replication of the WeChat model through chatbots on Messengers.
Now, it remains to be seen, what is the audience response to the mini-app model as Snapchat gains inroads to the U.S, U.K, and other markets.
Snapchat’s New Feature ‘Snap Minis’ Will Be the Next Hot Thing in the Market
Snap introduced an array of new products and partnerships for Snapchat including original shows, Minis, new lenses, new navigation bars, and games at the 2020 Snap Partner Summit.
The highlight of the event was Minis – a suite of miniature apps developed by third parties that will run inside Snapchat. This will be integrated into the Snapchat chat window that would allow users to buy movie tickets, shop with friends or meditate.
In an interview with The Verge, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said,
“Let’s say you’re getting ready with your friends, or your school dance is two weeks from now — you can actually shop together with your friends, which I think could be a really fun experience.”
Image Credit: Snap
What Snap Announced:
-Minis are web-based apps built on HTML-5 for Android and iOS.
-Minis will start rolling out next month on Snapchat with the first seven minis.
-A mini-app by Coachella to coordinate and plan a festival line up with the friends.
-A mini version of Headspace to meditate and send encouraging messages to friends.
-A mini-app by Tembo to create flashcards for studying,
-A mini-app by Atom to buy movie tickets, pick seats, and choose timings.
Why They Matter:
– The inclusion of mini-apps will increase Snapchat’s functionality and potentially making it a one-stop app like WeChat for GenZ.
– The main purpose behind creating minis is creating eCommerce avenues as its main competitor WhatsApp has already ventured into digital payments and shopping.
– The company’s growth is stable in the messaging space but is not big enough to compete with the likes of Facebook and Google for ad revenues in the long term.
– As a result, it plans to build an ecosystem that revolves around its camera technology to unlock new revenue generation options.
What’s New For Brands:
– Brands especially looking to target the younger audience should consider developing a Snap Mini to provide services and ensure easy accessibility to Snapchat users.
– It is easy to maintain a mini-app than a full-size app as brands can leverage the Snapchat’s user base to gain traction.
By The Numbers:
– These miniatures applications are compared to WeChat’s mini-programs that generated $113 billion for Tencent last year, according to The Verge.
– Snap execs revealed that it reached over 229 million daily active users on average in the first quarter of this year, with over 100 million in the U.S. alone. (That’s larger than TikTok or Twitter’s U.S. footprint.)
And, there’s lots more from the 2020 Snap Partner Summit:
1. Camera Kit: It allows developers to bring Snapchat’s AR capabilities and engagement into their own apps that enable apps like Squad to create a co-viewing experience while video chatting with friends.
2. Dynamic Lenses: It allows developers to bring real-time information from their app into Snapchat lenses.
3. Bitmoji For Games: A cross-platform avatar for gaming on mobile, PC, or console. This means it is easier for a user to maintain a uniform gaming identity online by using one avatar across all games.
4. Snap Games: An interactive way for friends to play the game on mobile which includes “Bitmoji Party.”
5. Lens Studio: A free and new desktop feature that allows developers to bring their machine learning models to power lenses. For the first SnapML creations, the company partnered with Prisma, Wannaby, and others.
6. Local Lenses: A new feature that allows users to create 3D worlds on top of their building and or decorate nearby buildings with colorful paints and have a new AR experience.
7. Scans: Snap expanded its scan platform and announced new partners for plants, dogs, and nutrition information. Plant Snap will help the user identify 90% of all known plants and trees. Dog Scanner to identify 400 breeds, Yuka will launch a nutrition scanner to provide ratings on the quality of ingredients in the packaged foods and Louis Vuitton will help users scan the monogram to be transported into the inspiration behind their latest collection.
8. Voice Scan: It allows users to issue voice commands to find lenses.
