Despite making me feel like a grandpa, I am reinstalling Snapchat today - for the sake of AR

4 years ago, one of our interns got me to install Snapchat. Despite being tech savvy, after a few days of use, “I definitely [felt] like a grandpa when the video messages [were] over before I figure out how to turn the sound on.”

Admitting it publicly only came once I read this Slate article from Will Oremus

Is Snapchat Really Confusing, or Am I Just Old?

A 32-year-old’s hopeless quest to understand America’s fastest-growing social app.

And the conclusion allowed me to shamelessly delete the app from my phone, leaving me peacefully ignore the phenomenon until June 2020.

But then, following with great interest anything XR related, more publications came every day about the Snapchat Lenses and how brands were using it to boost their marketing/communication strategies. (and some had already seen this from a while ago )

Picture taken from the 2016 Wired Article: How Snapchat’s Sponsored Lenses Became a Money-Printing Machine

Until last week though, I was not feeling any urge to get back to it. Then the 2020 Partner Summit arrived. One particular line of a Shodu review caught me of guard.

The rear camera is now just as important as the selfie-creating one

This was an Eye opener. It was confirming the Snapchat move to rule (in) the AR world. The final strike, what really decided me to face again the yellow ghost, was this Protocol article covering what SnapChat plan is towards the camera, and more specifically about AR and the AR cloud

Snapchat’s plan to put its camera in every app on your phone

Extract for non developers in simple words:

"What Snap is attempting to do with Camera Kit is similar to Google putting a search bar into your browser, Amazon integrating Alexa into your sound system, or YouTube using embed codes to become the internet's default video player."

So here I am SnapChat, ready to "snap" again and become part of this (r)evolution for how we develop applications and services, but first and foremost how we consume and produce content.

Before you ask : No, you will NEVER get me to take a selfie with the puppy filter...

If you read me so far, you might agree (or not). Let me know what you think in the comments!