The beauty of Snapchat is derived from the ephemerality of the messages you send. Send a friend an ugly selfie? It disappears in mere seconds. Get too ~confessional~ in your Story after one too many drinks? It'll vanish in a quick 24 hours—Snapchat allows you to create a narrative for your day that can only be in the present. Sure, you can save your most fire selfies, and yes, people do take screenshots on occasion, but it's the only social network that doesn't reward you for leaving a trace. Until now!
Because today marks a new chapter for Snapchat: The app has announced a new, game-changing feature called Memories, described (opens in new tab) as "a personal collection of your favorite moments that lives below the Camera screen."
"You can use Memories to create new Stories from Snaps you've taken, or even combine different Stories into a longer narrative," the company wrote (opens in new tab) in a blog post. You can now upload old Snaps to your latest Story, though they will appear with a frame around them to signify that the picture is old (in other words, maybe you don't look quite as good as you did in that one selfie you took last week, but damn it, you want to share it again anyway). Memories also allows you to put saved photos in a special "My Eyes Only" folder, so you can safely scroll through the photos without the risk of your friends seeing your best-lit nudes.
Memories both does and doesn't change the primary function of the image sharing app. Along with the Discover feature, Memories positions Snapchat not only as a place to send scandalous pics or selfies galore, but as a legit competitor to Facebook, Instagram and other social media heavyweights.
Snapchat is slowly rolling out the Memories feature over the next month and will send you a message when it's available for you. Godspeed, my lovely Snapchatting teens.
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