Snapchat

The notch? What notch?

Make space on your phone.

Snap Inc, the company behind the Snapchat iOS app, is preparing an initial public offering which it hopes can raise $3 billion, with the Securities and Exchange Commission filing identifying Apple and its iMessage platform as one of its main competitors.

Future versions of Snapchat for the iPhone could reportedly recognize and overlay images onto the world around you, extending well beyond just facial recognition.

Image and video sharing app Snapchat is making itself easier and quicker to navigate by username, via a soon-to-arrive update for iOS introducing a universal search bar that gives access to core functions.

Subscriptions and a larger Live element headline the social network's efforts to make content easier on the eyes.

Snapchat released an update to its iOS app today that lets you overlay emojis on top of video snaps. So if you'd like to place, say, a "Face With Tears of Joy" or "Ghost" emoji on top of your video, just record the clip and tap the emoji button at the top of the screen, located next to the text option. From there, you can find the select emoji, drag it around the screen, and resize it with the pinch-to-zoom gesture. You can choose static ones or emojis will subtle animations that can interact with...

Snapchat is releasing a major update today that bolsters its chat function with a variety of new multimedia features. The long-rumored update adds more than 200 stickers featuring walruses, sloths, aliens, and Snapchat's signature ghost, and they can be searched by keyword, as on Facebook Messenger. There are also easier controls for starting a video call, allowing you to dial someone who is not present in the chat. You can also choose to chat via audio, and switch back and forth from audio to video...

The real world finally caught up with Bjork's virtual reality style music, and now you can get it via an iOS app.

LG is hoping its webOS 3.0 platform can compete with the new world of set-top boxes.

Vine on Tuesday released a long-awaited extension of their popular app for Apple Watch, and added a new feature to its iOS app designed to make it easier to surface new content quickly.

Snapchat quietly dropped an update last night that makes its chat feature a lot more interesting. Now, when viewing a snap in someone’s story, you can swipe upward to send that user a direct chat message. The original poster receives a notification and can hop into a private message thread tied directly to the original snap....

A number of iOS apps have been updated with new 3D Touch commands for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, including mainstays like Skype and Snapchat. Meanwhile, Apple has reportedly rejected an app called Gravity that attempted to use 3D Touch as a weight scale mechanism.

Your Snapchat game just got better.

Teenagers have short attention spans, but Snapchat’s latest feature could keep them tuned in. Today Snapchat is introducing a new set of filters called “Speed Modifiers” for videos you shoot on iOS or Android. They let you add slow motion, fast-forward, or rewind effects to your video. Just swipe sideways after shooting a video and you’ll eventually see them applied to…

Snapchat is courting teenagers around the world who want to save their data plans with a new travel mode. When enabled, Snaps, Stories and Discovery content will only load if users tap them, rather than loading automatically when they open the app.

Has Snapchat been eating up your mobile data each month? You can finally put a stop to that: in an update being released today for iOS and Android, Snapchat includes an important new feature called Travel Mode: turning it on will prevent snaps (Discover, Live Stories, and friends' updates) from automatically downloading, saving you from hitting a data cap or receiving that troubling text message from Mom or Dad with a warning that you've gone over your monthly allowance. When Travel Mode is enabled,...

Snapchat is taking some drastic steps to make sure you know about Discover, the special section where chosen media partners (and Snapchat itself) post content for the app's millions of users. Today the company updated its mobile app with a redesigned Stories screen that sandwiches a very prominent shortcut to Discover partners right beneath your stories and above those from your friends. The "live" section has also been moved up to this spot, and it too gets preferred placement over your friends....

Snapchat's making it a bit easier to keep your account (and all the snaps contained within) secure. The app's most recent update on Android and iOS adds the ability to enable two-factor authentication. Once switched on inside the settings menu, login verification requires that you enter a 6-digit code upon signing in from any device you haven't used before. Snapchat will text this temporary code to the phone number linked with your account, a popular security move that should substantially lessen the...

Snapchat just introduced an update that will let you switch between the front-facing camera and rear-facing camera while recording a snap. Users have long been able to switch between the front- and rear-facing cameras for still photos, but switching mid-video was impossible. Instead users had to turn the phone around to film themselves or their friends. It’s a small feature update…

Speaking at Re/code's Code Conference on Tuesday, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said the ephemeral messaging firm is tossing around the idea of ditching its familiar hold-to-view user interface, a change that could help pave the way for an Apple Watch app version.

Snapchat’s Discover feature feels like the awkward guy in a nice suit at a casual party. Discover’s professionally made content from CNN, Comedy Central, Food Network, and others is too polished to be naturally bolted onto the app. But Snapchat’s not giving up on Discover despite reports that viewership is down 30% to 50% since its launch in January.Today Snapchat is…

A number of major iOS downloads saw updates on Wednesday, including the official NBC app, which now offers live streaming in select market. In addition, Kayak has gained a new "Hotel for Tonight" feature, Snapchat has added the ability to take a snap while listen to music, and Yelp now offers review translations for iPad.

Apple on Tuesday released its annual "Best of 2014" list for the App Store's most-downloaded and highest-grossing titles, revealing so-called "freemium" games as the year's biggest money-makers.

Snapchat doesn’t ask for your real name, but its on the debit card you use for its new peer-to-peer payments feature Snapcash. That could prove very lucrative for the ephemeral messaging service. [Update: Snapcash is now available on iOS, but what’s interesting is code buried in the Android app. It shows Snapchat can potentially run verifications on Snapcash users’ full…

In a surprise announcement on Monday, ephemeral photo and video messaging service Snapchat unveiled Snapcash, a person-to-person payments platform powered by Square.

If you want to join the Snapchat craze and learn the basics, check out our step-by-step guide.

Facebook’s standalone photosharing app Slingshot is sidestepping its core “reply-to-unlock” mechanic by letting people send reactions to reactions that are instantly viewable, thanks to its first update for iOS and Android that just went out. This solves Slingshot’s biggest problem: the inability carry on an normal conversation. Finding friends is easier now too thanks…

Apple's iOS ecosystem played host to a trio of interesting updates Tuesday, with Facebook officially releasing its answer to Snapchat -- which itself showed off a new location-based group photo album feature -- while "quantified car" app Automatic received a redesign and a new fuel reporting feature.

Time-limited image sharing app Snapchat on Thursday announced Chat, a new feature that allows users to send text messages to each other and connect through a live video chat with one tap.

Snapchat is slowly adding features on top of its highly successful ephemeral messaging platform. Today’s two new features are a good old chat interface and a new FaceTime-like video calling feature. Text messages could greatly change the nature of the app. While ephemeral photos are a great way to send something funny and start a conversation with your friends, many users sent multiple snaps…

Apple on Thursday added to its App Store a section dedicated to apps that make it easy to share "selfies," a term coined to describe self-portraits users of smartphones and other devices post to social media networks.

Snapchat has today issued a new update for Android and iOS that allows users to opt out of linking their phone number with their username. The move comes after 4.6 million phone numbers were leaked on New Year’s Day following…

Snapchat has updated its iOS and Android apps, adding several improvement like "smart" filters and the ability to replay photos and videos. The photo and video messaging service now allows users to replay one snap every 24 hours. Normally, snaps are deleted after up to six seconds, never to be seen again. The new feature, however, gives users a second chance to view a photo or video they want to get a closer look at.

As we wind down the year, The Next Web compiled a list of some of the social apps that have made some significant moves in 2013. How did we qualify what a social app was? In our mind, it was a service that had a core functionality that enabled users to interact and engage with other people, either online or offline....

SSnapchat just rolled out a big update with a bunch of new features, the most important being Replay. Now, every day brings a one-time chance to review the most recent message in your stream. If that makes you think twice about what you've been Snapchatting, maybe it's time to reevaluate your life.The Replay option is opt-in for recipients, not senders, and only gives you one extra look at the message — it's still deleted from Snapchat's server after the first view. The rest of the app's updates...

Ephemeral messaging service Snapchat just got an interesting update that adds the ability to replay a message once per day, “flash” your front camera by whiting-out the screen, filters and an overlay option with data like time, weather and speed....

My least favorite part of Snapchat is mistakenly opening video Snap when I can't hear it, like in a noisey public place or when my sound is off. Snapchat tried to address that today with an experimental new Replay feature that lets you rewatch one old Snap per day. But by fixing that problem it created a much bigger one. It killed off some of its ephemerality.

Popular photo and video messaging service Snapchat on Friday released an update to its iOS app, bringing a host of new features including "smart filters" and the ability to replay one snap per day.

We’ve known for sometime that SMS is becoming passe for many smartphone owners worldwide....

Snapchat has rolled out a new feature called Stories, allowing you to add a Snap to a feed for 24 hours before it vanishes.

A new update for Snapchat that just rolled out adds an option to create Snapchat Stories, a new type of sharing for the temporary social network which allows users to build chains of shared content that can be viewed an unlimited number of times over a 24-hour period. The Stories are shared to all your friends at once, and each piece of content added itself lasts for a full day before…

An apparent bug in iOS 7's Background App Refresh implementation is causing users of certain third-party apps to be kicked out of login sessions, forcing them to reenter their credentials every few hours.

Everybody's favorite photo-sharing (and photo-disappearing) app just got a slick makeover in the App Store. Snapchat rolled out version 5.0, dubbed "Banquo," on Wednesday for iPhones. It boasts a slew of speed and design enhancements, including swipe navigation, double-tap to reply, an improved friend finder and in-app profiles.

Snapchat has updated its iPhone messaging app with a number of design and navigation improvements. Following the rollout of its "Banquo" update, Snapchat now offers the ability to double-tap messages to reply, has made it easier to add friends, and has rolled out new in-app profiles which mimic the public web profiles previously available in the app. The company has also introduced swipe navigation between the camera, friends list, and message inbox, while refreshing the camera screen with a more...

The popular photo messaging application, Snapchat, just got a big update. Version 5.0 of the app was released on the App Store today and it comes with a bunch of nice improvements that will help users send messages faster than ever....

Messages for iOS is arguably the most-used app on my iPhone: I use it more than Mailbox, more than Camera+, more than Google Maps, and definitely more than Phone. And I’m probably not alone here. Text messaging is an integral part of the mobile device experience, and Messages—specifically its integration with iMessage—makes it a joy to use....

Ten days after it first launched in private beta, Snapchat’s new Android video messaging feature has today emerged from testing and has gone live on Google Play, along with a few other improvements....

Snapchat announced that it had raised $13.5 million in funding over the weekend and now the chat app, famed for its self-destructing messages, has brought video to Android version through a limited private beta....

Do you have a smartphone? Then chances are you've been a creeper. Now don't get all defensive, just yet.

Facebook on Friday released a Snapchat-like app called Poke, which allows users to send private messages that expire after 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds. Less than 24 hours later, it is already the number one most downloaded app on Apple’s marketplace, less than 24 hours after it became available....

Snapchat now does video. The photo messaging app, which lets users exchange pictures timed to disappear within seconds, now allows you to record and share small snippets of video. Each message can be up to ten seconds long, and the same rules apply: you get only one chance to watch each movie clip, after which it will vanish from your inbox. In explaining why his company considers video to be a worthwhile endeavor, CEO Evan Spiegel said the inherent brevity that Snapchat offers could appeal to people...

The safe sexting app that automatically deletes pictures you send to friends a few seconds after they view it has added something that could get a lot raunchier: videos. Yep, Snapchat does video now. You can record a video up to 10 seconds long and send it to your Snapchat friends. They can only watch it once before it self-destructs into porny oblivion after a few seconds (1 to 10)....

Additional reporting contributed by Fran Berkman and Jennifer Shore. Instagram, Twitter and Facebook were, without a doubt, the most talked about apps of 2012, but they're...

Have you ever sent a photo to a friend you later wished you could erase? Maybe you had your eyes closed, or you noticed a stray nose hair upon second glance. Snapchat, an...

Nothing says sexy time like loading an app and connecting to Bluetooth technology. But for long distance couples or those who travel a lot for work, a new app called...

Snapchat hopes to outgrow its bad rap as a sexting app, but first it’s outgrowing the Stanford dorm room where it started. Today it announced it has hired a community manager and two engineers, and has now been used to share 110 million photos that each disappear after a set time limit. Now its shooting to release a big iOS update by the end of June that will include “password recovery, bug fixes, a faster camera and drawing”. And to appease its younger core demographic who might not be able to afford i...

“The minute you tell someone that images on your server disappear, everyone jumps to sexting.” Evan Spiegel laughed and leaned back into his chair during his first sitdown interview since his iPhone app Snapchat blew up over the last month. Snapchat is #12 on the free iOS photo app charts in the U.S. and just scored some mainstream media attention in The New York Times.  Why? Snapchat is a photo-sharing app that changes privacy norms in a very novel way. The free app allows users to send others photos a...

Texting sexually explicit messages and photos (also known as ‘sexting’) has grown significantly with the rising popularity of smartphones…

With smartphones approaching near-ubiquity, people must learn to behave in public and watch everything they say and do. You never know when your inappropriate actions could be captured for posterity….