You May Not Have to Hold Your Finger to View Snapchats Any More

Speaking yesterday at the Code conference at Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel announced at the popular social media platform is considering removing the mechanism by which users have to hold down their finger on the phone screen to view Snaps. Saying that “it’s annoying to hold your finger there,” Spiegel also touched upon the possibilities that this opens up for the proliferation of longer video content on the platform and other types of media, which was made difficult previously. The mechanism has been a fundamental part of the Snapchat user experience, first implemented to prevent taking screenshots, but it is now functionally obsolete thanks to Snapchat’s own screenshot detection API. Snapchat’s Discover feature already does not require the user to hold down their finger to view content. Other tidbits revealed by Spiegel during his interview included the fact that Snapchat logs over 100 million active daily users in developed markets, with 65% of them creating content. Already a massive boon to advertisers, it will be interesting to see what new kinds of media start appearing on Snapchat if the hold-to-view mechanism is indeed removed.