Snapchat is still under fire for introducing the weird design update which was heavily criticised by millions around the globe. The update which splits app into two sections which changed the way of posting stories plus your friend’s message icon and story is visible in the same place which is quite annoying. Many people uninstalled Snapchat because of the update. Putting that aside, Snapchat has now introduced two new updates this week to get its users back.
Group Video and Voice Calls
The new video chat feature allows you to call up to 16 friends and conduct a video chat with each other simultaneously. And even if you want to add more people to participate, you can add up to 32 people in a group voice chat. Snapchat has previously introduced one-on-one voice and video calling back in 2016. Since then according to the company users are making millions of calls on Snapchat every day.
Instructions to use the video chat feature:
- Enter an existing group chat you already have, or start a new group.
- Select the video icon to start a live group video chat or simply tab on the phone icon for a voice call. The group members will be notified that they’ve been invited to a call.
- When your friends enter the video chat, you’ll get an alert above your keyboard to let you know that they’ve joined.
- If you don’t want to use your camera, you can toggle it off and use voice call instead.
- Users will also be able to use Snapchat filters as well over their faces.
“Mentions” feature allows users to tag friends in snaps
The tagging of friends in 24-hour snaps is something already available on Instagram Stories. Snapchat is borrowing a feature from Instagram this time around now since Instagram has coped Snapchat many times. The company says that this feature is something “ influencers/celebs will be particularly excited about.” since it allows these users the ability to easily tag a brand or company they want to promote with a click-through link for their followers.
Instructions to use “Mentions” feature:
- To tag a friend, just start typing in “@,” spell out the username of the person
- Then select the name you want to tag.
- People who will be able to see the tagged snap and add the person as a friend or watch any public stories they’ve posted.
- The person you tag will be notified in the chat window that they’ve been mentioned in your story.
Since the past few months. Snapchat has been adding a lot of features to attract more users including the Map Explore, beautiful Bitmoji customization etc. Snapchat claims the new video group call and tagging features will roll out globally over the next week or so.
