Snapchat is may be an underdog in the social media business. But it certainly knows that there is always room for improvements.
Knowing that people can travel a lot, Snapchat is introducing what it calls the 'Temporary Live Location' feature. What it does, is allowing users to share their live location with their friends on the platform. This way, users can let others know where they are exactly.
This feature here not only improves Snapchat as a social media platform, but also makes it a safer place for users.
In cases, like when users are coming for a meet up or heading home along at night, the feature should be a welcome addition, considering that the majority of Snapchat users are youngsters.
The safety feature is also being rolled out as more people are returning to school campuses, traveling, going out on dates and otherwise resuming what they did before the COVID-19 pandemic, the company said.
But unlike the location sharing feature on other platforms, Snapchat's Temporary Live Location is a bit different.
First, users can share their location updates with others for a period between 15 minutes to up to 8 hours.
Second, users can only share their location with friends, or on an individual basis. What this means, users live location will not be traceable or visible to the entire Snapchat community. According to Snapchat, users can only share their live whereabouts to "trusted friends and family” who have been selected.
As the company explained, "this new tool will give Snapchatters the option to share their real-time location with a close friend even while their app is closed."
It's worth noting that users cannot share their live locations with more than one person at a time.
Additionally, Snapchat also displays a pop-up window when users access the live location feature for the very first time. This is meant to be a reminder that live location is only meant to be shared with trusted people. The purpose here is to avoid any kind of privacy issues that users could face due to real-time location sharing.
"Snapchatters can update their location sharing preferences at any time by tapping the settings gear at the top of the Snap Map. There, they can hand select which existing friends can see their location, or hide themselves completely with ‘Ghost Mode.’ Snapchatters who do decide to share their location on the Map will only be visible to those they have selected — we don’t give anyone the option to share their location publicly with people they have not proactively and mutually added as a friend," the company noted.
When using the feature, the person seeing users' live location will see Bitmoji with a special 'Live' icon.
This icon is only visible to the person, and no other.
“For Snapchatters who maintain our default privacy setting, content shown on the Map is automatically anonymized, so anyone looking at the Map cannot see the name, contact information, or exact location of the person who shared. We also protect sensitive businesses and locations on the Map,” the company added.
In order to share a live location, users can:
- Open the profile of their friend they want to share their real-time location with.
- After selecting the person, users can then select the ‘Share my Live Location’ option.
- When clicking on the option, users will see a pop-up message to inform them about the feature.
- Tap on the 'Sounds Good' to use the feature.
To create this feature, Snapchat partnered with It's On Us, a nonprofit founded in 2014 to combat sexual assault on campuses.
Since 2017, Snapchat has allowed users to share their locations with friends on its Snap Map feature, which updates a location only when the user has the app open.
Temporary Live Location feature is an extension of this Snap Map feature.
At this time, the company said that some 250 million users use Snap Map each month.
Snapchat has around 500 million monthly active users, and according to a survey conducted by the company, 78% of its U.S. users wouldn't hesitate to share their locations on Snap Map.