On January 25, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has announced that it will shut down its camera application for Mac and PCs.
According to a report by The Verge, the Snap Camera enables users to apply filters to their faces while they are on video conference calls. The parent company announced the change on its support page for Snap Camera and said that the application will “no longer be available to use or download” later this month.
Moreover, the techn company also described that users can still use Snapchat filters on the web version of the application.The report also added that Snap Camera was released for the first time in 2018, and the company promoted it as a tool for spicing up users’ Twitch streams.
However, in December, Snap had announced that its upcoming augmented reality (AR) feature would help creators earn money.
The announcement was made by Snap at its Lensfest developer event and claimed that it had been working with some creators to build lenses that include purchasable digital goods.
Users are likely to get a blank screen after the Snap camera gets disabled later this month, so it’s better to uninstall the app and switch to your default camera.
The company said that compatible AR lenses will work with the web version of its app, which was launched last July. In response to a creator on Twitter, Snap said that it is focusing more on expanding Camera Kit access for the web.
“We’re adjusting our web-based investments for the AR creator & developer community to focus on expanding access to Camera Kit for Web. Stay tuned for more info this year, and you can keep using Lenses on your computer with Snapchat for Web,” it noted.
The discontinuation of the Snap Camera app — spotted first by— is not entirely sudden and surprising. Last year, it laid off 20% of its staff and shuttered its drone product months after first launching it.
Last month, the company also announced that it is planning to close the location-based social app Zenly, which it took over in the year 2017. As the company will now emphasize on improving ecommerce partnerships and paid lenses to generate more revenue with a sized-down team, side projects like a desktop camera app will be expectedly cut off.
Snap did not immediately responded to a request for comment as why it was discontinuing Snap Camera. One commonly perceived reason may be that it is no longer as essential as it once was. Many companies have not only returned to in-person work, making video conferencing less of a routine, but video chat apps have also incorporated their own filters. Zoom has long allowed you to dress up as an animal or apply weird facial effects, and on Thursday, it announced it would add customizable human avatars as well. It may be too early to compare the feature to Snap’s Bitmoji.
