Today, Snapchat announced the development of Geofilters, which let you add a filter over your photo that shows your location.
Geofilters will be available in New York City and Los Angeles starting today. The company has also made the filters available in a number of undisclosed locations that users will be able to find, said VP of Communications Mary Ritti.
“We think Geofilters are really fun, and we are excited for people to discover them in different places,” Ritti told VentureBeat. “We are not sharing the total number created thus far, and we think it will be fun for people to find them.”
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In a video posted on the Snapchat blog, users can be seen adding Geofilters to photos taken at Disneyland and Venice Beach as well as retail fronts. If you want to meet up with friends, doing so via Snapchat may now be as easy as snapping a photo, adding a Geofilter and sending it on its way.
The Snapchat blog says that although you need to enable location services on your phone to use Geofilters, Snapchat still doesn’t store your location information. The app is popular because its videos and photos self-destruct once they have been viewed by recipients.
The Geofilter feature could help Snapchat drive revenue in the future if the company decides to charge retailers for hosting filters on the app. However, it’s worth mentioning that Disneyland, which was featured in Snapchat’s blog video, did not have to pay for its filter, according to The Verge.
For now, it’s all about making temporary photos look that much more appealing to app users.
