Note: This was featured as part of our Web Wednesday segment on Charleston’s 105.5 The Bridge. You can catch us every Wednesday morning at 8:20 am ET for your dose of social media & digital marketing news. Listen to the segment below:
ECommerce has been a part of online business since its introduction in the 1990s. Up to this day, businesses around the world have included the option for customers to buy products and services online.
Social media sites have incorporated eCommerce into their platforms in various ways. Apps like Facebook and Instagram make purchases easy with a click of a button. Multimedia messaging app, Snapchat, is possibly looking to follow suit with their popular way of interacting with people.
TechCrunch reported the findings of a new search process in the back-end code of Snapchat. The new feature would allow users to press and hold down on the camera button to identify an object. This is similar to the music feature created through the partnership with Shazam where users can press and hold down to identify a song. After the track is detected, you are provided with links to Apple Music and Spotify if you wish to purchase it.
Adding object recognition has been a goal for Snapchat for some time, and they are looking to increase their internal database to make room for the millions of objects that can be scanned. An increase in search capacity is a big, yet attainable goal for the company. The visual product recognition feature would search for products similar to those on Amazon. With over 500 million product listings on the website, the object identification options would be endless.
Pinterest has a similar feature with their Lens Tool. With it, you scan objects and find pins visually related to them. After reporting over 600 million searches a month with the lens tool, it has proven to be a marketing success for the company.
In 2015, Snapchat introduced image recognition trigger cards. This allowed companies to provide info within images after being scanned through the app’s camera. Because Snapchat’s defining feature is their camera, tapping into a “search lens” would encourage growth within the app and an increase of use with the camera. Snapchat has already partnered with Amazon, so it won’t be too long before speculation becomes a reality for product recognition within the app.
Want to learn more about Snapchat’s new features with product recognition? Looking to add e-commerce to your business? Give us a call at (888) 632-4499 for a free, no obligation consultation today. We’d love to help you out!
