Have you ever wondered if your friend group has been hanging out without you? Well, if your answer to that bizarre question is somehow yes, Snapchat has good news for you.
Snapchat has always been famous for coming up with new features that make it different from all the other social media apps, like the disappearing chat messages feature, the story feature etc. Even though this stories feature was copied by Instagram and more people used it on Instagram than the app with the original feature, Snapchat is back with a bang. It may have lost one battle, but it sure as hell won’t be losing the war.
3 days ago, Snapchat unveiled a brand new feature called Snap Map (Yes, you are right; it’s exactly what you think it is). As we can all guess from the name, this new feature consists of a map view, that you will be able to see your friends on.
According to Tech Crunch, recently, Zenly, a French startup known for creating social maps that utilize GPS location services to see where your friends are, was acquired by Snapchat. This deal was supposedly worth $200 million in cash, as well as additional stock awards, and was signed last month. Instead of shutting Zenly down, and merging its operations with Snapchat, the company has allowed Zenly to run autonomously to some extent (like Facebook does with Instagram).
Here is how it works. You start off by pinching to “zoom out” into the map view. If your friends have opted to share their location with you, then their Actionmoji will be visible on this map view. They will be positioned on the map neatly, making it very easy for you to see which part of the world they are in. In addition to that, if you tap the Actionmoji of any of your friends, you will be redirected to their latest Story.
In case, you are one of those people who find it borderline creepy to share your location with your friends all the time, you can keep it to yourself using the Ghost Mode.
Also, you can choose to share your location with specific users. For example, if you are out on a date with bae, and you don’t want the family members you have on Snapchat to keep track of you, you can make a separate list of users, and only they will be able to know where you are. You can also use Bitmoji avatars as your marker on the map, making it that much more fun to look at.
Feel free to tell us if you’re excited to stalk your friends with this new Snapchat feature!