When Snap Inc. announced its Q2 financial results earlier this month, it reported 173 million daily active users – an increase of 21% year-over-year. But this fell short of what was expected. Analysts were expecting 175.2 million DAUs. 

(Snap defines a DAU as anyone who opens the Snapchat app during a defined 24 hour period.)

Regardless of your position on this stock, one thing is clear about the company: they are very creative and they continue to innovate.

The company is currently testing a new feature called “Crowd Surf.” What it does is automatically stitch together related Snapchat Stories from the same location to form seamless videos. 

It made its debut at a concert in San Francisco. The real magic is how Crowd Surf was able to assemble a continuous audio track using an assortment of 10-second Snapchat Stories, all taken from different locations at the concert and all from different users.

Click here and scroll down for a preview video.

To accomplish all of this, Snap takes a “sound print” of the audio playing in a particular location from people’s Stories. It then filters each of the clips so they sound more alike and autogenerates a stitched together video.

You obviously need a critical mass of users and content for this to work, which is why the feature was introduced at a concert. But it’s certainly a remarkable way of creating valuable content from decentralized user inputs.

I guess the only question is: How long until Instagram copies this?

Photo by Yvette de Wit on Unsplash

When Snap Inc. announced its Q2 financial results earlier this month, it reported 173 million daily active users – an increase of 21% year-over-year. But this fell short of what was expected. Analysts were expecting 175.2 million DAUs. 

(Snap defines a DAU as anyone who opens the Snapchat app during a defined 24 hour period.)

Regardless of your position on this stock, one thing is clear about the company: they are very creative and they continue to innovate.

The company is currently testing a new feature called “Crowd Surf.” What it does is automatically stitch together related Snapchat Stories from the same location to form seamless videos. 

It made its debut at a concert in San Francisco. The real magic is how Crowd Surf was able to assemble a continuous audio track using an assortment of 10-second Snapchat Stories, all taken from different locations at the concert and all from different users.

Click here and scroll down for a preview video.

To accomplish all of this, Snap takes a “sound print” of the audio playing in a particular location from people’s Stories. It then filters each of the clips so they sound more alike and autogenerates a stitched together video.

You obviously need a critical mass of users and content for this to work, which is why the feature was introduced at a concert. But it’s certainly a remarkable way of creating valuable content from decentralized user inputs.

I guess the only question is: How long until Instagram copies this?

Photo by Yvette de Wit on Unsplash