If you’re a Snapchat user, then you know the serendipitous feeling of travelling somewhere or attending an event and discovering new Geofilters – overlays for your snaps that can only be shared from that specific part of the world.
Now Snapchat is letting anyone pay to create On-Demand Geofilters for others to use.
The filters start at $5 and cover areas from 20,000 to 5,000,000 square feet – or approximately the size of a small building to about a few city blocks. Maxing out the size in my Manhattan neighborhood cost about $624 per hour.
Snapchat isn’t providing much assistance with the filter designs though; you must create and upload your own filters, although at least you can download some templates to get you started.
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Snapchat sees this as a fun option for things like birthday parties, weddings or business promotions. It’s not hard to see how it could be a quick and effective source of revenue for the company, especially after closing its Lens Store in January.
It’s also worth noting that other than size and duration, location also affects the filter’s price. Reserving a little over 500,000 square feet of geofilter space cost approximately $63 per hour in New York City’s Upper West Side, while the same area in my hometown of Yonkers, NY cost only ~$13.
If everything is in order, the filters are approved “within one business day,” after which they will show up as an option just like any other Geofilter.
All that being said, the lack of an built-in template designer probably sets the barrier for entry too high for the average user not well versed in Photoshop or Illustrator – not to mention having to making sure your design follows Snapchat’s fairly lengthy set of submission guidelines.
Still, it’s a start, and hopefully the company will improve the tool with a filter designer in due time.
If you’ve got the money and design chops, you can create your own filter starting today in the US, UK and Canada; just head on over to the link below (and if you’re on mobile, don’t forget to follow add us here).
➤ On-Demand Geofilters [Snapchat]
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