Apple said to be developing its own Snapchat-like service

The company is creating its own video-sharing app, which will come with filters and drawings

Facebook and Snapchat being rivals has always made sense, as the two are pretty similar services, catering to a very similar audience. Even Snapchat and Twitter seems plausible. Snapchat and Apple, though? That's not a rivalry I would have expected to develop.

Yet, it may happen, if Apple does launch its own Snapchat competitor, as reported by Bloomberg on Thursday.

Apple is said to be working on its own video sharing app, one where users would be able to create videos, then put filters and drawings on them before sending them to their friends or their social network accounts. Users would be able to use the app with one hand, and get them shot, edited and then posted in only one minute. 

The app is being headed by Joe Weil, who co-developed a video blogging app called KnowMe, and who joined Apple in December of last year.

This new app would be in addition to recently announced updates to iMessage, which will put new effects on text messages, as well as stickers and the ability to draw on photos and videos. With both of these updates, Apple is allowing it users to creatively alter their content, much like they can on Snapchat.

It also seemed to part of a larger push by Apple to make its applications more social, an area it has not had much success with in the past. For example, there was Ping, it music social network service.

The company introduced Ping in September 2010. The service hit one million users in its first 48 hours, but never really took off and, less than two years later, it was shut down.

More recently it launched Apple Music Connect, which allows artists to connect directly with fans through Apple Music. The Connect tab features posts from all of the artists and curators they follow and users will automatically be following artists whose music they’ve already downloaded.

Snapchat clones

If going after Snapchat seems like a good idea for Apple, maybe that's because it's become the thing to do these days, at least when it comes to Facebook.

Facebook tried to copy Snapchat twice, launching two apps with disappearing content, Poke and then Slingshot, both of which failed. It also, like Apple, began adding similar features like face-swapping and stickers.

Its most recent effort is Lifestage, which it launched earlier this week, a video-sharing app aimed at teens.

The most blatant stealing from Snapchat, though, has come from Facebook-owned Instagram. First it ripped-off Snapchat's Stories feature at the beginning of this month. Instagram even went so far as to also name its feature as Stories. That's how little the company was trying to hide what it was doing.

Like Snapchat's product, Instagram's Stories allows users to post moments from their day, creating a narrative based on their photos and videos. Then, again like Snapchat, they will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on the user's profile grid or in feed.

The poaching of the idea was so brazen that Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom even gave Snapchat credit for the idea!

That was followed by the introduction of Event Channels, which collects the best videos from live events, which are then curated to create a channel. 

If that sounds familiar, that's because it's pretty much the exact same idea behind Snapchat's Live Stories feature, in which it collects photos and videos that are location based, as in all of the content will revolve around a singular event, like a concert. That content is then curated and turned into a channel. 

A Snapchat spokesperson had no comment on this report. 

VatorNews has reached out to Apple for confirmation of the report. We will udpate this story if we learn more. 

(Image source: mic.com)