Last week, Snapchat made its foray into instant messaging by adding instant message and video calling feature to its Android and iOS apps. Today, a new report from The Verge suggests that the latest update was powered by company’s secret acquisition of AddLive.
AddLive integrates live video, voice and text chat into various applications and hence, this acquisition can help the company to pump up its video chat feature even further. Financial details of the deal however were not disclosed by either of the company. Snapchat was looking for a startup to enhance its video offering and this latest deal according to the report was done few months ago.
The popular self destructing photo messenger moved beyond selfies and allowed users to make video calls and send text messages within the app. In order to send a video, a user simply has to press and hold and the video is shared with your desired contact.
This latest move from Snapchat shows that the start-up is trying to compete with well established players like WhatsApp and BBM. Facebook owned WhatsApp is a current leader in the instant messaging ecosystem with more than 500 million monthly active users. The social messaging market is already crowded with other players like Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, Viber, Line and others.
Source: The Verge