It has been almost a year since Snap launched Snap Maps, and now, the company is upgrading the feature in order to make it more interesting. The first upgrade called World Effects is a feature that incorporates flashy animations as well as colour schemes to Maps. World Effects is able to send a flare of confetti on your birthdays to users and their friends and certain themed maps will also be released for specific holidays and “cultural events.”
If you open Maps during the period of Valentine’s Day for instance, every landmass that is displayed will appear pink and fluffy. On the other hand, if maps are opened around Halloween, they will display a more morbid colour appearance. More holiday themes are still being worked on.
The other upgrade for Maps is called Weather Effects. This includes animations on the basis of the weather in the location where the Snapchat user is. If a user happens to be stranded away from home in say a rainy or snowy day, they will be able to open their Map, zoom in, and see their avatar stranded in the very same place they are.
In previous times, Snap Maps attracted a lot of press and the major reason for this is because it provided users with the opportunity to experience breaking news of events that are going on around the world when they are occurring. Be that as it may, updates like this though not having much of an impact are still somewhat significant to users. In a comment, Snap product designer Jack Brody said, “That’s something we aim to pull in to everything that we do,” he said. “We’re always thinking how do we keep this playful, how do we keep this personal and allow it to feel like it’s alive.”
We are not entirely sure when these updates will be officially rolled out but according to Snap, they’re “coming soon.”
