Snapchat wants to be Shazam for everything – Morning Brew

Snapchat wants to replace Google as the destination for certain urgent day-to-day questions, such as “What dog breed is black, brown, and has jowls.” Or “What to make with kohlrabi.” How? With its freshly upgraded, augmented reality-powered Scan feature, which rolled out yesterday, The Verge reports. The visual search feature lets users take pictures of certain things—e.g. cats, plants, vegetables—and generate information and/or recommendations. For instance, using Scan’s new shopping feature, you can point your camera at a piece of clothing you like, and Snapchat will recommend similar items. Prior to its makeover…Snap Scan could identify songs, solve math problems, and clock items available for sale on Amazon. In addition to expanding what’s scannable, Snap is placing the feature smack in the middle of its app to juice engagement: Snap says Scan currently has 170+ million monthly active users. Zoom out: Insider Intelligence principal analyst Victoria Petrock told Emerging Tech Brew that we’ll soon see more tech like this, which aims to actually…you know, augment reality. She also noted that Google, Amazon, Pinterest, and even startups like RedLaser already have similar tools.“Now that it’s possible with Snapchat we might see the younger user base using [visual search] and maybe it will catch on more…
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