Snapchat now lets users add animated emojis to their video

Snapchat has been seeing a lot of growth in video, tying Facebook with eight billon views a day

While Snapchat's original selling point was the ephemeral nature of its content, that seems to have morphed somewhat into being more about the things that users can do to their photos.

The company has started giving its users all sorts of ways to spruce up their photos before they send them. It offers stickers, or emojis, as well as lenses, which include a fake mustache or rainbow vomit or, most notably, the ability to face-swap

At the same time, Snapchat has found big growth in video. So, naturally, the two have now dovetailed and the company has begun to offer its users the ability to put emojis on their videos.

Here's how they work: when a user goes to record a video, they just have to hit the sticker button to place their sticker over whatever object they want to cover in the video. The emojis will move, rotate, and scale automatically with the video, so they don't look static. If the object starts out far away and moves closer, the emoji will grow as well. 

Here's what the finished product might look like:

The feature is only going to be available on Android at first, with an iOS release expected “very shortly.”

So why is this important? Because it's an indication that Snapchat is going to be tapping into the power of its video platform, which is growing very fast.

Snapchat reached eight million video a day in early March, which was a 14 percent increase in just one month. Growth is increasingL In November the number of views was six billion, and it took two months to add another billion. In May of last year it had only two billion views, meaning it quadrupled in less than a year. 

Of course eight billion views a day is a big number, but there's another reason it's so important: it means that Snapchat tied Facebook in that metric.

What's driving all of this video growth for Snapchat is its Stories feature, which differentiates itself from the site's destructible nature by allowing posts to be viewed for 24 hours before they disappear. That allows for a lot more viewing than a post that goes away after 10 seconds. 

Another reason for its rise in view views is its Discover feature, which is made up of unique channels through partnerships with publishers. Snapchat launched the Discover feature In January as a way for editorial teams to put up their own Stories.

Launched in January of last year, Discover was originally made up of 11 unique channels: one for each media partner, including ESPN, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan, Daily Mail, Food Network, National Geographic, People, Yahoo News, CNN, Vice and Warner Music, and it has since added channels for Refinery29, Tastemade, IGN, iHeartRadio and Mashable. Each one features photos, videos and other long form content. There is also a Snapchat channel.

In October, Snapchat unveiled its first sponsored Discover channel, for Spectre, which included a video from stars Dave Bausista and Lea Seydoux and behind the scenes footage.

VatorNews has reached out to Snapchat for more information on the new feature. We will update this story if we learn more. 

(Image source: tubefilter.com)