# Crowd Surf

**Published by:** [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/)
**Published on:** 2017-08-22
**Categories:** crowd-surf, instagram, snap, snap-inc, snapchat, uncategorized
**URL:** https://brandondonnelly.com/crowd-surf

## Content

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

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