The first Snapchat Lens that reacts to sound is now available to Android and iOS users, coming in the form of a relatively simple animal face filter that visually changes depending on what the app hears. Snap hasn’t clarified how exactly its latest offering works, nor did it provide detailed instructions on how to get it to change shapes. By the initial look (and sound) of things, it appears the Lens is primarily concerned with the volume of background noise; the louder you or your environment are, the more wiggly and larger will your mask become.
Augmented reality Lenses are an important part of Snapchat and one of the main selling points of the ephemeral messaging ecosystem, having been possibly the most prominent driver of its early growth, with some of them even becoming a sort of “celebrities” in their own right. The move to audio-sensing features is a first for the Venice, Los Angeles-based company, with Snap revealing it’s planning on introducing a wide variety of other such functionalities in the coming weeks, presumably in a gradual manner.
Snap recently celebrated its first full year as a publicly traded company, though its investors had few reasons for festivities, with the firm’s stock value plummeting from $27.09 to below $11. While some analysts are now questioning whether Snap’s IPO came too early, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel remains adamant that the service is on the path of long-term sustainability. The Snapchat maker lost some $2.2 billion over the course of last year, having touted its Q4 2017 performance as the best in its history despite ending that three-month period $350 million in the red as it managed to add close to nine million users. The company is presently in the process of reversing some changes introduced as part of a controversial redesign that pushed many users away from its app following what’s said to be a highly centralized product decision.