Snapchat has announced it is ‘putting the chat into Snapchat’ with a new instant messaging service to rival numerous other messaging apps on the market. The service will be accessible on both Android and iOS by swiping right on a friend’s name in their Snapchat inbox to start an instant text conversation. Live vieo messaging will also be a part of the service.
In classic Snapchat style, when the user leaves the chat screen, all their messages and those of their friend will self-destruct automatically. However, users can tap or screenshot to save anything they would like to keep.
“Until today, we felt that Snapchat was missing an important part of conversation: presence. There’s nothing like knowing you have the full attention of your friend while you’re chatting,” said Snapchat in a blog post.
The new features will come in an update to the existing app, which is currently not available in app stores but will be available soon.