Who will make the next dancing hotdog? Maybe you. That’s the hope of Snap, which for the first time in the company’s history, will allow anyone with a computer and a little spare time to make its addictive Lenses–those 3D, augmented reality figures that can show up in your snaps. To date, Snap has made over 3,000 of them on its own.
The announcement comes on the heels of Facebook launching a very similar initiative within Messenger. Right now, social networks are racing to rule messaging-based ads. And so far, augmented reality filters seem like the most promising way in.
To open its platform, Snap has shared its own creative tools and repackaged them for anyone to download for free in a desktop app called Lens Studio. It’s an app that allows you to create, and even animate, 3D figures in whichever software you prefer to use like Blender or 3ds Max, then import that data so it can live and breathe inside Snapchat. Once you’ve created a lens, you can easily share it. You’re provided a Snap Code (essentially a QR Code) that you can send to friends, or, when you use the lens yourself and share the video, other users will be able to tap the UI to adopt it themselves.
Snapchat’s growth has largely stagnated and its earnings aren’t meeting expectations. But the potential of 178 million daily users, 84% of whom are between the ages of 13 and 34 in the U.S., actively interacting with an ad that lives on their face, will surely woo marketers, especially with this more open toolset. The question, of course, is just how much? Could this be Snap’s YouTube moment for augmented reality experiences, in which the community takes over creative in a massive, self-perpetuating cycle? Or will rendering 3D figures on PCs prove too much of a hassle for Snap’s mobile-obsessed audience?
“We want to emphasize that this is just the beginning,” says Eitan Pilipski, VP, Camera Platform team, when I pose the question. “We want to put it out there and learn.”