There's a lot to Snapchat.

Besides the fact that the app can be confusing to use if you're over the age of 25, there are a lot of hidden features and Easter eggs to uncover.

Luckily, we've done the hard work for you. Here are the best Snapchat tips and expert tricks to take your snap game to the next level:

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You can stack filters on top of each other to create multiple effects at once. Tap and hold on the screen with one filter enabled and then swipe again with another finger to keep adding.

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Turn on Travel Mode if you're worried about Snapchat using too much of your phone's data plan. You can find it under "Manage" in your settings.

One of Snapchat's many quirks is the list of emojis it puts next to your friends' names. They're called Friend Emojis. Here's what they mean:

Here's what they mean:

• 💛  Gold Heart: Congrats, you are best friends with this person on Snapchat. You both send the most snaps to each other.
• ❤️ Red Heart: You both have been each others best friend on Snapchat for at least two weeks.
• 💕  Pink Hearts: Things are getting serious. You both have been each othersbest friend on Snapchat for at least two months.
• 😬  Grimace: This one is a little sneaky. It means that you share a best friend with the someone. So their best friend is the same as your best friend.
• 😊  Smile: This means that the person is one of the people you message on Snapchat most frequently. But they're not your best friend.
• 😎  Sunglasses: If you see sunglasses next to someone's name, you share a close friend on Snapchat with this person. It usually means that you're running in the same friend group.
• 😏  Smirk: This indicates a one-way relationship, and you're the taker. This person sends you enough snaps to make you one of their best friends, but you don't send them many snaps back.
• 🔥  Fire: Ah, the infamous "Snapstreak." This "appears next to the numbers of days that you and a friend have snapped each other," according to Snapchat. "If you AND your friend don't both send a Snap within 24 hours, you will lose your Snapstreaks."
• ⌛️  Hourglass: This is a warning that you're about to lose a "Snapstreak" with someone.
• 👶  Baby: Congrats, you just became Snapchat friends with this person.
• 🎂  Birthday Cake: It's this person's birthday on Snapchat.

Over the past six months, Snapchat has made three hires from the same Los-Angeles-based marketing tech startup, Shift — a move that likely signals the company is serious about turning its recently-launched advertising API (application programming interface) into a world class revenue platform.

Shift was a social advertising platform that hooked into all the major sites — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and so on — and let marketers serve content across them and analyze those campaigns.

The company was bought by Brand Networks, a larger social marketing company, for $50 million in 2015 in a cash and stock deal.

First to fly the nest from Brand Networks over to Snapchat was Shift's cofounder and CEO James Borow.

He moved into a revenue partnerships role at Snapchat in February, according to LinkedIn. At Brand Networks, he became the chief product officer following the acquisition.

Next to shift to Snapchat was Daniel Druger, who in May also moved into a revenue partnerships role. He was Shift's product marketing manager and became a product manager at Brand Networks following the acquisition.

Most recently, Mike Khristo left Brand Networks to move into a "developer relations" role at Snapchat. He was VP of product solutions at Brand Networks and was head of solutions engineering at Shift before that.

Snapchat declined to comment on the hires. Brand Networks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In June, Snapchat launched its long-awaited ads API. It has seen the company partner with more than 20 marketing and ad tech companies — including Brand Networks— to let marketers buy create, buy, and analyze their Snapchat ads using third-party software.

Before, marketers had to buy ads on Snapchat through its direct sales team, but now they can buy in an automated (known as "programmatic") fashion like they can across the rest of the web, which will likely serve as an adrenaline shot to Snapchat's revenues.

Documents leaked to TechCrunch in May suggested Snapchat is project full-year revenues of between $250 million and $350 million in 2016, and up to $1 billion in 2017.

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"Pokémon Go" is huge.

The augmented reality smartphone game has been a wild success, netting tens of millions of downloads in the space of a week, and sending Nintendo's stock skyrocketing.

But just how big is it?

By one metric, the app is already almost as big as Snapchat and Google Maps.

SurveyMonkey Intelligence estimates that the smash hit game has more than 11 million daily active users in the United States on Android. That's already far more than Twitter — which has just under 6 million — and if it continues at its current growth rate, it looks certain to overtake Snapchat and Google Maps within a week.

This doesn't mean more people have "Pokémon Go" installed than Twitter/Snapchat/Google Maps — that's not the case. But its users are far more engaged, using the app far more frequently than the others. Tens of millions of people in the US will have Google Maps installed, but they will only rarely open it.

This is pretty crazy: In a blog post, SurveyMonkey points out that, "as unbelievable as it sounds, Pokémon GO Android could surpass Google Maps itself as the largest user of Alphabet’s mapping data."

SimilarWeb, which did a similar analysis to SurveyMonkey a few days ago, estimated that more than 60% of people with "Pokémon Go" installed are using it on a daily basis.

(A note: Google doesn't break out this kind of data itself, so we're forced to rely on third-party estimates, which will never be perfectly accurate. All "Pokémon Go's" Android download page says is that it has been installed between 10 million and 50 million times worldwide. Additionally, this data refers only to Android users in the US. The game is only officially available in America and a few other countries, so global comparisons would not be meaningful.)

This wild hype may well drop off over time. The game is hugely popular, but it's not clear whether Niantic, its developer, can build it into a sustainable business — or if it will just be a passing fad.

But right now, its popularity cannot be overstated. According to a separate analysis from SensorTower, people are spending more time in the "Pokémon Go" app on a daily basis than just about any other app — including Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Kylie Jenner is often reported to be the most-viewed person on Snapchat.

Most of her Snapchat stories just involve a lot of her pursing her lips into the camera:

There are also a lot of snap filters:

There are peeks into her daily life, like what she's cooking:

But mainly, her Snapchat consists of a lot of selfies.

While the 18-year-old's account feels unfiltered and organic, Jenner recently revealed that she puts more thought into her stories than it may appear.

Kim Kardashian interviewed her little sister for the new issue of Allure and asked for a few tips for her own Snapchat account.

"I put a lot of thought into it, and I always like to give people what they want to see," Jenner told Kardashian. "It's not that I necessarily [want] to post all of my cars today. It's that I know people want to see that and live their life through ours. If I were watching your Snapchat, I'd want to see you and Kanye and Nor. I'd want to see your house."

And Snapchat cars she does:

Jenner also gives behind-the scenes looks into her famous family:

And, of course, she uses the account to promote her popular Kylie Cosmetics lip kits:

She even does intricate 15-step makeup tutorials:

Luckily if you miss her Snapchat stories, they're all documented on Instagram here.

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Snapchat's rapidly growing user and advertiser activity and the significant decline in personal posts on Facebook and Instagram are spurring talk of a shift in the balance of power between the social-media heavyweights.

But these concerns are overblown, according to a research note from Deutsche Bank analysts cited by Business Insider. Facebook's size, messaging strength, and Instagram's growing roster of advertisers are major advantages.  

However, there are certain areas in which Snapchat excels, and these strengths should concern Facebook:

• Soaring personal sharing, daily video views. In April, sources familiar with Snapchat's internal data claim that 10 billion video views are occurring daily on the app, with over one-third of users sharing "Stories"— visual updates that stay up for 24 hours — every day, Bloomberg reports. This means that Snapchat has overtaken Facebook in terms of daily video views, even despite its smaller user base, and this will undoubtedly help Snapchat attract valuable video ad dollars. 
• Augmented reality filters and innovative ad formats. Snapchat has been a pioneer in augmented reality (AR), allowing users to overlay visual and location-based filters on their photos. This is an area that Facebook has been trying to move into earnestly, as illustrated by its acquisition of the photo-filter company Msqrd in March. Yet AR has yet to fully take off on Facebook, which means that Snapchat is better placed to attract advertisers who wish to use modern AR-oriented ad formats like sponsored filters and geo-tags.   
• Popularity among young millennials. Snapchat ranks as "the most important social network" to teens, according to a survey by investment bank Piper Jaffray as cited by Business Insider. This was the first time that Snapchat supplanted Instagram, but only by a slim margin: 28% of teens see Snapchat as the most important social network as of Spring 2016, compared to 27% for Instagram.
• Snapchat’s ad effectiveness. A recent study found that ads on Snapchat performed far better than ads on other social media platform. This performance was measured by the following metrics: visual attention, or the amount of time a user spent watching the ad; emotional response, or how deeply a user reacted to an ad; and purchase intent, or how much of ap positive influence the ad had on a user’s path to purchase. Also, nearly two-thirds of Snapchat’s videos are seen with the sound on, compared to Facebook where only 15% of videos are played with sound.  

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Snapchat appears to be working on a new ad product that would use image recognition to pick out real-world objects in user's snaps in order to serve them related filters, ads, and coupons.

A patent published by the United States Patent and Trademark office on Thursday and first filed in January 2015 (you can read it in full below) details how the system would work.

A person taking a photo of The Empire State building, for example, could be served a fun filter of King Kong that they could apply to their snap.

In the patent application, Snapchat details how someone taking a photo of the south side of the building could be served a filter of King Kong's back, while someone over on the north face of the building "might see King Kong's face looking at you." The patent says the filter could include audio and visual effects content, meaning the filters could be animated or play a theme tune.

Snapchat is also thinking of a way to monetize the technology. As this diagram shows, a person who has just taken a snap of a cup of coffee could be served a coupon to redeem in-store.

Meanwhile, a photo containing an object recognized as within a restaurant could trigger filters of the restaurant's menu. A snap of a certain food type could throw up filters with calorie information. Restaurants could even launch a Snapchat game, where users could snap as many different menu items or locations as they can, in order to be served filters with "celebratory graphics" and awards.

The patent shows how companies could bid against different types of objects, much like they bid against keywords in search advertising. The ad slot — the filter — ends up going to the highest bidder. The patent also suggests that the platform could hook up to an API (application program interface) server, so advertisers could potentially use the third-party software they use to buy ads elsewhere on the web to buy this sort of advertising too.

Right now Snapchat already offers "geofilters," which are overlays users can apply to their snaps that change depending on their landmark, area, or event taking place where they are located at the time. The artwork for these filters can be submitted for free by users, but businesses and individuals can also purchase on-demand geofilters, which can include their brands and trademarks, too. 

But these kind of image-recognition filters take the idea to the next level. The patent suggests that Snapchat may be working on some sophisticated image recognition technology in order to make this possible.

It also suggests that, much like it has done with its popular Sponsored Lenses product, Snapchat is looking to diversify its revenue model with ad products that are unique to the app and not like anything else on the market.

As always with patent filings, it's worth bearing in mind that companies file them all the time and many of these ideas never come to fruition.

Snapchat declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider.

Here is the patent document in full:

SEE ALSO: Advertisers love Snapchat's priciest ad format — and that ought to worry its social media rivals

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Snapchat wants to make its photo filters much smarter.

The Los Angeles based startup is working on advanced object recognition that can serve filters with ads, promotions, and other information based on physical objects in a photograph or video. The technology was outlined in a patent application published on Thursday.

The patent, which was filed in January 2015 and first published on July 14 2016, outlines different reasons Snapchat would scan the contents of a photo, including "a discount associated with a type of the object at a local merchant establishment."

Letting businesses pay to present ads, promotions, and other information as object-based photo filters could prove to be a lucrative source of revenue for Snapchat, which already sells sponsored location-based geofilters filters and interactive selfie "Lenses."

Several examples in Snapchat's patent hint at the technology being used for more than just ads. For example, a filter could serve up educational information about an object in the photo, like the nutrition information and cost of a meal or "photo filters that overly a menu of the restaurant on the photograph."

Object recognition could also be used to identify an animal and show a filter "associated with a safari," according to the patent filing. Snapchat could show a filter that places a virtual pet on your shoulder. (Hello, Petco sponsorship!)

By scanning the contents of a photo, Snapchat wants to let people use filters that change based on where they are in relation to the object. One fun example from the patent filing details how a filter could show the back or front of King Kong based on what side of the Empire State Building a photo was taken.

The patent outlines a bidding system that merchants could use to serve ads for certain objects — think soda companies competing with ad dollars to scan a drink in a photo. Individuals would also be able to submit their own object-based filters similarly to how Snapchat lets people make their own custom geofilters already.

The ability to recognize objects in the real world could help pave the way for the augmented reality headset Snapchat has reportedly been working on.

The startup has recently made a string of hires in the AR and VR space, including talent from the likes of Facebook's Oculus. Its CEO, Evan Spiegel, was also photographed last fall wearing a mysterious pair of camera-equipped sunglasses. 

Snapchat declined to comment when reached by Tech Insider.

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Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel seems to enjoy having personal control over Snapchat's brand. 

In its early days, Spiegel allegedly turned down an acquisition offer of more than $3 billion from Facebook, and he has personally vetoed ad campaigns he thought just didn’t jive with the brand.

This has left certain people asking the question: “So why does Snapchat keep releasing goofy toys?”

Sources at Snapchat tell us there’s a simple reason they keep releasing these toys: fun.

Here are the the pieces of Snapchat gear you can buy on Amazon, from ice trays to backpacks.

SEE ALSO: 26 of the best iPhone tips and tricks, according to Apple

Official Snapchat Ice Tray: $12.99

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Official Snapchat Playing Cards: $9.99

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Official Snapchat Backpack: $44.99

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Snapchat is exploring how facial recognition technology could be used to protect the privacy of its users.

A new patent from the smartphone messaging company, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on July 19, is entitled: "Apparatus and method for automated privacy protection in distributed images."

It discusses how sophisticated face-recognising technology could be used to scan new photos, and then — depending on who it detects — it could either refuse to allow the image to be shared without permission, or even automatically edit the image to protect the subject's privacy.

It's a novel use for facial recognition tech, which is a frequent subject of concern for activists due to its potential to invade people's privacy and facilitate surveillance. Snapchat's patent paints an alternative possibility: The tech could actually be used to enhance people's privacy.

A Snapchat spokesperson declined to comment.

You can read the full patent below.

Using emojis to defend people's privacy?

United States Patent number 9,396,354 was first filed with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) on May 27, 2015. It has two inventors listed: Evan Spiegel, cofounder and CEO of Snapchat; and Robert Murphy (better known as Bobby), cofounder and CTO.

The language used in the patent filing is dense and technical, as patents often are — but it details an interesting concept. For example (emphasis ours):

"A method executed by a computer, comprising: receiving an image from a client device; executing a facial recognition technique against an individual face within the image to obtain a recognized face; applying privacy rules to the image, wherein the privacy rules are associated with privacy settings for a user associated with the recognized face; and distributing a privacy protected version of the image, wherein the privacy protected version of the image has an altered image feature, wherein the privacy protected version of the image is distributed to an ephemeral gallery ... [and so on]"

In plain English?

• Snapchat could build a facial recognition database of its users, and these users would be able to save certain privacy settings about how they want to let photos of them be shared.
• Then, when a photo of a user is taken, the feature would scan it to see which Snapchat users it can detect.
• If a detected user has certain privacy settings enabled, then the feature will limit how the photo can be shared. It might only be able to be sent to other users who are in the subject's "social network." Or the subject might get sent a message with the image in, asking for their permission so it can be shared.
• Or, if the photo-taker does not have permission to share a photo of someone, the feature will automatically modify the image before it is sent — blurring out the subject's face, or replacing it with an emoji, or an icon, or "a brand." (Another option is to block the sharing of privacy-protected images altogether.)

It protects user privacy — but only in certain ways.

At this point, it's important to note that just because Snapchat has filed a patent doesn't mean that the feature will necessarily make it into the official app. Big tech companies file thousands of patents a year, many of which never see the light of day.

But the patent filing is interesting for a number of reasons.

For a start, it suggests that Snapchat is actively exploring facial recognition technology.

The app is already notable for its filters (called "lenses") that map users' faces and overlay images and animations on top of them — but these use "object recognition" rather than facial recognition tech.

"[It's] an algorithm designed to understand the general nature of things that appear in an image. It lets us know that a nose is a nose or an eye is an eye,"Snapchat says on its Privacy Centre website. "But object recognition isn’t the same as facial recognition. While Lenses can recognize faces in general, they can't recognize a specific face."

The patent shows that while Snapchat is currently only making use of object recognition tech, it is at the very least thinking about the possibilities of facial recognition tech too — and may well be actively developing it.

It's also an unconventional approach to protecting privacy, and one that arguably has its downsides.

Yes, it protects you from unauthorised photography through the app. But, in the process, it gives Snapchat a detailed facial recognition database on its users.

Snapchat offers pretty poor targeting options to advertisers compared to the likes of Facebook or Google. The nature of a search engine or social network means you can target people incredibly precisely — while Snapchat only gives limited options like age, location, and gender.

The Los Angeles startup doesn't seem to crave this kind of fine-grained detail, however: CEO Evan Spiegel has explained plenty of times that Snapchat's aim is to avoid the kind of "creepy" ads that internet users often hate.

That said, if you can recognise exactly who is any given photo, you can theoretically target ads far more precisely.

The patent discusses the possibility of monetising the feature: "Facial recognition operation may [also] be used to add content, such as a sticker, text or an advertisement, which do not necessarily protect privacy or hide identity, but do provide an enhanced image," it reads.

However, it's not explained how these advertisements would work. We don't know whether they would simply augmented a user's face, like existing filters — or if they would actively target ads towards the specific users in photos. The latter would be unexpected, given Spiegel's aversion to "creepy" ads.

We do know that Snapchat has been thinking about using object recognition tech to deliver targeted ads, coupons, and filters. A recently-published patent details how the tech could be used to detect where a subject is, or what objects are in a photo, and serve up ads accordingly. 

Here's the full patent filing:

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Earlier this year, Snapchat paid more than $100 million to purchase Bitstrips, makers of comic-style illustrations called Bitmoji, and now the purchase is bearing fruit.

On Tuesday, Snapchat announced that it's integrating Bitmoji features into the main Snapchat app.

Bitmoji is a sticker app that lets users create cartoon avatars that looks like themselves. The Bitmoji app was first launched in 2014, but Bitmoji had found traction before then with its first product, called Bitstrips, which used the same customized sticker concept.

Users will have to download the Bitmoji app separately — the feature won't be totally integrated into Snapchat. But once your settings are linked, you can send Bitmoji stickers in chat or stick them on snaps.

Here's how it works:

Here's Bitmoji's first screen. You'll have to download a separate app.

The first thing you do after downloading Bitmoji is design an avatar that looks like you.

Bitmoji was a keyboard at first, but today we're hooking the app up to a Snapchat account.

Snapchat has fun stickers, regular emojis, and now Bitmojis.

Snapchat officially integrated with Bitmoji on Tuesday after buying the company behind the popular app for over $100 million in March.

The Bitmoji app, which lets people creative custom emoji avatars of themselves, can now be linked with your Snapchat account. Once linked, you can send personalized Bitmojis to friends in chat and place them on top of messages like Snapchat's other stickers and standard emojis.

All you have to do to get started is link the Bitmoji app in Snapchat's settings:

And then you'll see your Bitmojis appear in chat and as stickers to place over snaps:

Here's a fun comic strip from Snapchat explaining the new feature:

And a video:

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The 2016 Republican National Convention kicked off in Cleveland, Ohio on July 19. 

Anticipating all the excitement, Cleveland.com decided to take a unique approach to covering the convention.

The regional news site invited four Snapchat stars to stay in a tiny home for its four-day duration, snapping along the way.

The stars include Mark Kaye (MarkKaye), Ali Spagnola (alispagnola), Stanley Odestin (wysamx), and Audrey Spencer (cakes1todough1).

As Curbed notes, the home is Cleveland's "first permanent tiny house" and measures just 583 square feet (which in many big cities is a pretty average size for a home).

It's like Real World: Tiny Home Edition. Keep scrolling to see what the home looks like inside.

The tiny house is located in Cleveland, Ohio. Pictured below is a snap from Kaye, who's really excited to be in the city.

Completed July 1, the house is part of Cleveland EcoVillage, a community that focuses on building sustainable homes. It's the only one under 600 square feet.

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The home is fully furnished and includes a kitchen, a living area, storage ...

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It's not uncommon to see a "Sign into Facebook" or "Sign into Google" button the first time you try a new app. Depending on the site, you might even log in with your Amazon, Pinterest, or Twitter account.

But Snapchat? That yellow box made its first official appearance on Tuesday.

The world got a glimpse at what could be a harbinger of possibilities for the upstart social-networking service when a yellow "Log in with Snapchat" button popped up inside the Bitmoji Keyboard app.

Bitmoji is an app that lets users create funny emojis styled in their own likenesses. Snapchat quietly acquired the company a few months ago and, on Tuesday, officially integrated the emoji app into its service.

Snapchat has bought companies before and added them to its app, like integrating the Snapcodes that make it easy to add people, but the Bitmoji acquisition was different.

Instead of adding Bitmoji as a default option inside the Snapchat app, Snapchat users had to download the Bitmoji app separately. After downloading the app, however, Snapchat let users sign in with their existing Snapchat credentials — no need to create a separate Bitmoji account.

It's not quite the same as using your Snapchat profile in place of a different username and password for every site, but it could hint at the future where a yellow "Log in with Snapchat" becomes as widespread of an option as continuing with your Facebook ID.

One small step for Snapchat

Right now, Snapchat is one of the few social platforms not to have a sort of "digital ID" that follows you around the web.

The Facebook log-ins, for example, give apps your name and email address in exchange for the site feeding the social network information about your visit. Signing up with your LinkedIn on certain sites can auto-fill a résumé.

Snapchat has been a closed book with no outside information going in or out — and it still is for now.

By adding the log-in with Snapchat feature for Bitmoji, Snapchat isn't opening itself up to other developers yet, since it owns the Bitmoji app. But it could foreshadow what's to come.

Imagine being able to one day log in to Spotify with your Snapchat ID, so that you can play music in the back of your videos. Or if you're looking at an ad on Snapchat and want to buy an item, then Snapchat could be an easy way to sign in — and it'd have more accurate data of when an ad leads to a sale.

Snapchat's Evan Spiegel has so far been against the creepy ads that track you, but one of advertisers' biggest gripes with Snapchat is the inability to target ads narrowly.

When it comes to ad information, Snapchat really has only broad buckets of information like age and location from when a user signs up. Facebook, on the other hand, can tell if you clicked on a product on one site and then show it to you on your news feed in an ad moments later.

There's no indication so far other than the yellow box in the Bitmoji app that Snapchat's ready to open up the gates. But if Snapchat ever decides to create a universal log-in system, then it could win points with users and advertisers, unlocking more revenue.

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If your Android phone keeps running low on battery, it might be because you're constantly using Snapchat.

That's according to a new report out from AVG Technologies, which releases an app report each year. This year's survey found that Snapchat most affected phone battery performance, followed by Spotify and messaging app (and recently public company) Line. Not only does Snapchat eat up your phone's battery, it fills your phone's cache, too. And those Snaps you thought had disappeared forever? Turns out Snapchat stores encrypted versions of the Snaps you send and receive. According to AVG, a 10-second video can raise Snapchat’s internal cache 11 MB.

Samsung WatchON — which has since been replaced, but allowed users to view and control programming on TVs or set-top boxes — was the top battery-drainer. Snapchat and Outlook came in second and third, respectively.

Other interesting takeaways from this year's report: the average Android user has 33 apps installed; of the users surveyed, Samsung phones were the most popular; and if you're running low on storage, Spotify is most likely at fault — the app requires a huge cache to stream and store music and is likely hogging a lot of space on your phone. 

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Last year, my roommate told me about an app called Bitmoji that lets you personalize a set of emoji to resemble yourself.

Bitmoji, and the company behind it — Bitstrips — has grown in popularity. Snapchat bought Bitstrips earlier this year for around $100 million, and this week, Snapchat announced you can now use Bitmoji within the app.

After my roommate's recommendation, I immediately downloaded Bitmoji to try it out. The app is available for both iPhone and Android.

I was tickled by how much they look like me — and the variety of emotions they represent. Check it out.

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After choosing several options for my appearance (face shape, hair color and texture, even my own virtual ensemble), an army of emoji twins appeared on my iPhone keyboard.

There's one for my boyfriend.

And one for making plans with my friends.

Supermodel Miranda Kerr and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel are engaged — and the soon-to-be-newlyweds announced the big news with (what else?) a Snapchat filter.

The couple have been dating for one year, though they were friends before their relationship began, US Weekly reports. Kerr posted the news today on her Instagram and in a Snapchat story. 

 "They are extremely happy," a rep for Spiegel told the Daily Mail. 

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You know the little black dots populating your Snapchat icon that allow other users to scan and discover you with just their smartphone camera?

One of the men who designed the technology behind that is now off on a never-ending vacation with his wife and their two children.

Snapchat acquired Scan, the company Garrett Gee cofounded with a handful of college friends, in 2014 for $54 million. That technology was developed into Snapcode.

The 26-year-old took his cut from the sale and has since moved on to other endeavors, including taking a seemingly never-ending trip around the world with his family.

Although they have money from the sale to Snapchat in the bank account, Gee told Business Insider that they haven't touched it. Instead, they used $45,000 they earned when they sold all of their belongings in a garage sale to finance a six-month trip around the world.

But somewhere along the way, Gee decided that if at the end of six months they hadn't spent all of that money and could find a way to make their traveling sustainable without having to draw on money in the bank, they would just continue to travel. With lots of planning and frugal spending habits, like always buying the cheapest flights, when they hit the sixth-month mark in December, they still had money to spare.

After he sold his stake in Scan to Snapchat, Gee realized that something he had poured his heart and soul into could disappear just like that. With that in mind, he recalled something that Naval Ravikant, the CEO and cofounder of AngelList, had said to him: "If you are young, one of the best things you can do is build a brand around yourself."

And so, through The Bucket List Family, that's exactly what he has done — build a brand around the faces, voices and adventures of him and his family by combining his love of photography and videography and pulling snippets from his journal to share with the internet. Gee said that the The Bucket List Family not only makes their nomadic lifestyle more sustainable, but also has allowed him to build a business around the kind of life he wants.

Gee said a personal brand is something no one can take away — something no one can acquire or dismantle for parts.

'I never really considered myself a businessman'

If his family's life traveling around the world is a little unconventional, it reflects the approach Gee has taken to much of his life.

Although now he's successful, Gee said school never came naturally to him.

"I was a very poor student," Gee said. "What you needed to do in school to get a good grade. That stuff was difficult for me."

While Gee struggled with homework and tests, he realized he could easily motivate himself to work on things that actually interested him. So when he attended Brigham Young University, which doesn't offer students the option to design their own degrees, he decided to enroll anyway in the courses that interested him.

His advisers told him, "You know, at the end of this you're not going to have a degree."

Gee's response? He was there to get an education, not a degree.

When he and his team initially moved to the Bay Area to continue building Scan, Gee was hyped. But soon he found that living in the heat of the tech scene limited the time he felt he could devote to the things that mattered to him the most, like spending time with his family or on his own physical well-being. While he loved what he was doing, Gee said he didn't like the path he was on, and he told his cofounders he wanted to move back to Utah.

They agreed, but asked that he help raise money beforehand. A 2013 appearance on "Shark Tank" looking for an investment ultimately brought Scan to the attention of Snapchat.

"I never really considered myself a businessman — I enjoyed the creative and entrepreneurial side," the part that can drive life forward, he said. "I'm really good at the stuff I care about."

For now, that means focusing on his adventures with his family. He confirmed that he also has another app in the works.

To take a look at his family's adventures, scroll below or check out their website.

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Garrett; his wife, Jessica; and their two children enjoy a day at the beach in Oregon.

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Here's one of the earliest photos the family shared on Instagram. Everyone's passport photos look ready to go.

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A family photo from their visit to Dominica.

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There's a new power couple in Los Angeles.

On Thursday, supermodel Miranda Kerr announced that she's engaged to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel — and to do it, she used Bitmojis from Bitstrips, which Snapchat just bought.

The Australian supermodel started dating the 26-year-old CEO a year ago. Here's how the two fell so quickly for each other:

SEE ALSO: Supermodel Miranda Kerr used Snapchat's new $100 million feature to announce her engagement to CEO Evan Spiegel

The power couple first met at a dinner for Louis Vuitton in Los Angeles and became friends. 'We were really good friends for a long time before we started dating,' Kerr told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Source

In 2007, Kerr was the first Australian to become a Victoria's Secret Angel and was among the world's highest-paid models. Now she's working on creative projects like jewelry lines and just launched a handbag collection in Asia.

The 33-year-old Kerr was once married to Orlando Bloom and had a son, Flynn. Spiegel had to wait at least six months to meet him, per Kerr and Bloom's rules, but 'things are going well,' Kerr said. 'We're just a modern family now.'

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Source: The Edit

A big update to Snapchat on Tuesday added integration with Bitmoji, the app that lets you create a personalized emoji avatar.

Snapchat quietly snuck in another another new feature in the same update: a new filter that lets you draw anything on your face.

The new addition is part of a rotating carousel of animated selfie filters that the company calls "Lenses." (The most famous Snapchat lens to date is probably a toss up between rainbow puke and the infamous puppy dog.)

What's different about this latest lens, which can be found next to face swap, is that it lets you use the app's drawing tools to doodle anything on your face. What you draw isn't static, either — it tracks your face's movements in real time.

The new lens remembers what you last drew, which makes it easy to quickly access your most recent creation.

As you can imagine, the people are already using the lens in pretty creative ways:

A Snapchat spokesman confirmed to Tech Insider that this is the first fully customizable lens in the app. The app's many lenses have morphed faces into all kinds of strange things (and even distorted voices), but this is the first time a lens has been fully editable by the user.

While silly on the surface, the ability to create your own virtual face mask in Snapchat highlights how the messaging app is experimenting with augmented reality. Imagine being able to draw a pokéball in your hand one day and throw it at someone.

SEE ALSO: Meet LA's newest power couple: Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel and supermodel Miranda Kerr

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Snapchat announced a new feature on Tuesday that allows users to create cartoon avatars of themselves to add as stickers to their snaps and chaps.

It followed Snapchat's $100 million + acquisition of the company behind the comic-style illustrations, Bitstrips, in March this year.

After the announcement, Snapchat users rushed to download the Bitmoji app, create their Mini-Me-style avatars, and hook them up to their Snapchat accounts.

And the feature proved so popular it managed to crash Snapchat's servers.

Its popularity appears to have taken Snapchat by surprise. One source close to the company told Business Insider that Snapchat is seeing more usage with Bitmoji right now than it is with the Memories feature it launched earlier this month, which allows users to save their snaps indefinitely.

This chart from Down Detector shows Snapchat suffered a brief period of outage on Wednesday morning:

Another chart from Outage.Report confirms there was an issue (different time zones explain why the outage times on the two graphs don't match):

Lots of users also complained on Twitter that they were struggling to access the Snapchat app:

A day earlier, Snapchat had acknowledged that some users were struggling to link the Bitmoji app to their Snapchat accounts.

The Snapchat Support account has not tweeted since.

Snapchat declined to comment.

Fortunately, the apparent Snapchat and Bitmoji outage didn't prevent Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr announcing her engagement to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel using Bitmoji on Wednesday:

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is looking at a way to recognize objects in your snaps and serve you related ads

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