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The latest Snapchat update should give Facebook and Instagram a couple new ideas.
Among the new features in the Snapchat app are a native integration with the popular media-identification app Shazam, and new creative tools for users to edit their Snaps.
The platform also debuted a long-awaited group chat feature – in this respect, Snapchat was decidedly behind the curve set by some of Facebook’s messaging apps.
This triad of new features represent a broadening of Snapchat’s platform. The Shazam partnership is particularly interesting since it gives an inkling into Snapchat’s ability to house third-party apps in its platform – an important attribute as it strives to grow a garden to match Facebook. These three new features and their impact are analyzed below:
- Chat in Groups of 16. Snapchat finally rolled out a group chat feature to let users chat with up to 16 friends. Users can create and name groups, invite friends and, in true Snapchat fashion, conversations will be kept for 24 hours. Strengthening Snapchat’s messaging capabilities makes the app more sticky in lieu of other apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, Kik, Line, etc. that offer group chat functions. This will boost Snapchat as a go-to communication tool, particularly among younger users.
- Shazam integration. Users can now use Snapchat to Shazam by holding down on the camera screen when music or other media is playing nearby. Once the media is identified, users can engage with Shazam content and share song discoveries as Snaps to friends. This provides yet another use case to keep Snapchat top of mind, and users inside the platform. A Shazam partnership could also yield immense data in terms of audio-recognition, and help build a reservoir of users’ music preferences.
- New creative tools. Paintbrush and Scissors are two new tools for editing Snaps that launched this week. Paintbrush lets users draw and apply filters to photos saved in Memories. In some ways it’s similar to Instagram’s filters, but with an emphasis on kitsch art rather than scenic perfection. With Scissors, users can select a snippet of a Snap and save it as a sticker in the app’s sticker drawer. This tool is particularly noteworthy in the way that it opens new avenues for creativity and self-expression on the platform.
Mobile-app makers and content creators are vying for consumer attention in a crowded and noisy market.
Even if an app can stand out enough to prompt a consumer to download it from among a list of millions, it then faces the challenge of enticing him or her to use it enough times to recuperate development, maintenance, and marketing costs. To make matters worse, those marketing costs have hit record-high levels over the past year as discoverability has become more challenging.
And while consumers are spending more time in apps, most of that time is spent in a few favorites. Consumers spend almost three-quarters of their total smartphone app time in just their three favorite apps, according to comScore.
But it's not all doom and gloom: There are numerous tools at a publisher's disposal to engage and re-engage consumers, and there are new products and solutions coming to market that can help alleviate some of the issues around this app engagement crisis.
Jessica Smith, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on app engagement that explores the current state of the app market, the issues around engaging consumers, and the tools at a publisher's disposal. It also identifies best practices for the implementation of some app engagement tools, and presents the pitfalls that some publishers fall into in this pursuit.
Here are some key takeaways from the report:
- The app market today is challenging and volatile. It's difficult to stand out, and most apps have to be offered for free in order to entice consumers who have too much supply to choose from. This puts greater emphasis on engaging consumers after they've downloaded an app in order to recoup costs.
- Consumers are more difficult to engage today, as most have dozens of apps installed on their devices yet spend most of their time in just a select handful of favorites.
- There are numerous solutions at hand for mobile app publishers and content creators seeking to engage consumers. Push notifications, in-app messaging, and app message centers with badges are three tools publishers can use to engage consumers.
- While many publishers mistakenly rely solely on push notifications for app engagements, this is a poor practice because many consumers don't allow push notifications and those that do can easily be overwhelmed when they receive too many.
- The best solution often includes leveraging two or three of these tools to engage consumers with the right message at the right time. The technology in this market has grown increasingly sophisticated, and publishers that don't diversify their approach run the risk of annoying their consumers to the point of abandonment.
- There are emerging engagement technologies that will change the current app engagement norms and present new ways for app publishers to communicate with users. The mobile ecosystem is changing quickly as technology improves and consumers become more comfortable conducting more activities on mobile devices.
In full, the report:
- Identifies the major challenges in today's app market and explains why employing good app engagement practices is more important than ever before.
- Presents the major app engagement tools currently available.
- Examines the pros and cons of each app engagement tool while outlining some pitfalls that publishers encounter in implementing them.
- Prescribes best practices for adopting various app engagement tools or strategies.
- Assesses how the market will likely change over the next five years as emerging technologies change both consumer behavior with mobile devices and introduce new tools with which to engage consumers.
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