Snapchat ready to fully embrace developers

Snapkit is a developer platform that Snapchat has been planning to launch. Under this platform, other apps will be allowed features like login to Snapchat, using a version of its camera software and Bitmoji avatars that users create of themselves. Snapchat is currently in talks with developers of apps to somehow integrate Snapkit into their platforms.   

Snapkit will help Snapchat to increase its users over time. In the first quarter of 2018, Snapchat has faced a growth rate of only 2.13 percent in its active users. The active users increased to 191 million from 187 million in the fourth quarter of 2017. The growth rate in the first quarter of 2018 has been the lowest ever for Snapchat.   

Facebook has also used similar tactics in the past to become a ubiquitous entity that it is now. This allowed Facebook to amass a plethora of active users on its platform. However, considering the recent snafu of Facebook with Cambridge Analytica, users might be very skeptical of signing up for Snapchat through other apps that do not have the same privacy policy.   

Snapchat has neglected outside developers for a long period of time. This was basically due to data breaches in 2014 by apps that secretly let users save snaps. After this incident, Snapchat blocked sharing from a popular music app, Mindie. However, in the past, Snapchat launched Lens Studio which warranted outside developers to create limited augmented reality content. The studio allowed outside developers to inculcate 3D interactive objects, like the dancing hotdog, in the photos and videos made by the users.   

What differentiates Snapkit from Lens Studio is its ability to allow outside developers to create content using their own apps. With extreme competition from Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat needs a platform like Snapkit to regain the spotlight that it has lost with declining user growth rates. Moreover, since Snapchat does not collect data on its users like Facebook, the risks associated with a data breach or outside developers misusing the data are lower.   

The new platform, Snapkit, will also allow signing up for other apps with user's Snapchat credentials. This will allow the users to export their Biitmoji to other apps, which is conducive to integration on a wide scale. Snapkit will allow the Bitmoji avatars to be added as stickers on images in third-party apps.   

Lastly, Snapchat has to convince third-party apps to build engineering resources to harbor its near 200 million active users. Although 200 million sounds a lot, it is still much less than the active users of tech behemoths like Facebook and Google. For too long Snapchat has been struggling under the shadow of Facebook. Snapkit can prove to be the tool to lift that shadow once and for all.