In a move that could potentially revive its waning usage, Snapchat
The mechanism through which this would be implemented is that once a Snapchat user takes a picture of a physical product or barcode, the user is directed to an Amazon pop-up card for that product or something similar.
The shopping tool, which is only available to a small set of users in the US for now, could eventually present another source of revenue for the social media company, which has struggled with competing apps like the Facebook-owned Instagram
The app has continuously tried to add functionality to its camera in efforts to stay relevant. Users can hold down a button to identify songs through Apple's
Snapchat could also be earning a referral fee for each thing a person buys from Amazon, or it could just be doing the legwork for free in exchange for added utility. It is clear at least that Snapchat wants its camera to become the new cursor - a person's point of interface between the real and digital worlds.
The benefit of such a feature is that visual searches are popular with younger shoppers and will help keep Snapchatters from straying to competing commerce sites. The agreement could also help Amazon make its site easier to navigate. With hundreds of millions of products to sift through, using text search can be cumbersome when shoppers aren't sure precisely how to describe what they want. A photo is not only more seamless, but also more likely to be acted upon since it is memorable.
This feature is not novel. Pinterest Inc. has a similar tool, and online marketplace eBay's