Snapchat will soon let you shop for products on Amazon with its camera
Instead of using your smartphone camera to take puppy-faced selfies on Snapchat, you'll soon be able to use it to shop online. Or do both.
Snapchat announced this week it's partnering with Amazon to offer users a new image-based shopping feature. The company says it plans to start testing the feature today, and will be rolling it out slowly to all users.
For those with the new product search feature, just snap a photo of something you want to buy -- like a bottle of makeup or running shoes -- and on the Snapchat home screen, different options to buy the product or something similar will appear in a pop-up menu from Amazon's online store.
It's almost too simple, especially if all your payment and shipping information is already stored and ready to go within Amazon.
The partnership was rumored back in July, and it's rolling out this week to select U.S. users as a first attempt at an in-app shopping feature. Apparently Snapchat users are really into e-commerce and online impulse buys.
It also works if you point the app's camera at a barcode, if you really know what you want.
Now you can pose in front of an Amazon Echo Look in your new outfits after the augmented reality features of Snapchat helped you spend all of the money you've saved. For Snap, that's a lot of shopping bags if its 70 million daily AR lenses users start using the camera to search for (and buy) new clothes, cosmetics, and household items with the app.
Topics Amazon Snapchat Virtual Reality
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
