By Pascal Oparada (Social Media/Tech Reporter)
One of the benefits of social media is to let your acquaintance know what’s up with you as you provide updates on your activities which lets friends know you are available.
Well, one of the social media platforms, Snapchat, has brought that ability home, real-time.
It is testing a feature which allows you to share a Snap Map Bitmoji showing what you ‘re up to at a certain place.
This fixes the problem Snap Map and many other location check-in apps as Snapchat refocuses on messaging after Instgram stole Stories. Status ensures that there is more to see that makes Snapchat worth opening.
Snapchat will compile all your activities into what it calls a passport.
You can share where you are and what you are up. Your Status can be available to friends you share your location with.
To see your friends status, you chose from the reams of poses for your Bitmoji ranging from reading a book to holding a sign saying “Text me?”
Meanwhile, “Passport is Just For You: Passport helps you keep track of the Places you’ve been. Places you set your Status at will be added to your Passport along with who you were there with. Only you can see your Passport, and you can delete a Place from your history at any time.”
Your Status only lasts until you leave a place, but it’s tallied along with the number of countries and cities you’ve checked into on your Passport.
A Snap spokesperson confirms that “Yes, we are currently testing new ways for Snapchatters to better communicate on the Snap Map with their friends. This test is running with a percentage of Snapchatters in Australia.” Previously, special Bitmoji were only displayed on the Snap Map involuntarily, like when you were road tripping or flying to a new place; visited somewhere special like a beach, mall or major event; or if there was a breaking news moment.
If you don’t want to use Status or even show up on Snap Map, you can go into ghost mode at any time, plus all your location-based content disappears if you don’t open the app for eight hours. And if you do want to be found, you can check who’s viewed your location or Status in case you need to know who’s blowing you off.
Given Facebook is aggressively cloning Snap’s whole product philosophy, from its direct copy of Stories to ephemeral messaging to its premium content hubs Watch and IGTV, Snapchat desperately needs to differentiate.
