Snapchat launches editing tool, gifting and marketplace for creators

Snap Inc., which owns Snapchat, has launched a series of initiatives to help the creators of its platform grow their audience and develop their businesses.

At its third partner summit, Snap Inc. The platform reaches over 500 million monthly active users with nearly 40% of its community outside of North America and Europe. In India, Snapchat has increased the number of Daily Active Users (DAU) by more than 100% YoY (YoY) in each of the last five quarters.

To help build the community of creators, the company launched Story Studio, a new standalone Snap app that provides editing tools for creating professional mobile content on mobile devices. The app will also provide information on the trends happening on Snapchat. It will launch later this year on iOS and will be available for free.

Snapchat is also launching a "gifting" with subscribers who can now send gifts to official Snap Stars to start conversations. Snap Stars makes a portion of the profit from the gifts, which are received through responses to stories and purchased through Snapchat Tokens.

The social media platform is expanding Spotlight's short videos feature to the web at snapchat.com/spotlight, where creators can upload a video to Spotlight directly from Chrome or Safari, and anyone, even without a Snapchat account, can access it.

Snapchat also announced the launch of the Creator Marketplace. Brands can use this new portal in the Self-Service Business Manager to find and connect with approved creators, from the best AR lens creators and, in the future, Snap Stars and Creators on Spotlight.

Snapchat is also working to make its camera more inclusive by working with several famous cinematographers to better learn the techniques they use to capture actors with darker skin tones. These features will be available in Camera Kit, so developers around the world can make their cameras more complete.

The platform also launched Screenshot, a new scanning feature that helps users scan photos and market similar topics with recommendations from hundreds of brands.

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