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SnapChat Finally Adds Chat Room Service To Mobile Application

By Oliver VanDervoort
Contributing Writer

Snapchat has just announced a rather major update to it applications that should return it to the middle of an ever-growing instant messaging apps war.  The messaging service is adding a chat feature that will make it that much easier to talk to your contacts. The addition of the feature might confuse those who have never used the app, since they would wrongly assume the service always allowed real-time chatting.

In actuality, the application had relied on people being content to send each other pictures and videos, set to delete themselves just a few moments after they were viewed by their intended recipient. Now the application has added the ability to have a live chat with a contact by swiping right on their names.

The ability to protect what has been shown and said is still in effect, as the conversation between the two friends will be deleted once both have left the chat room. If people want to save what was said in the chats, they can take screen shots of them. There is not other way to avoid chats automatically self-destructing.

The update likely makes Snapchat a real player in the instant messaging wars after long sitting on the sidelines and wanting a way to get itself into the fray. The startup has the benefit of being a well-known commodity when it comes to the younger generation. This might be a benefit simply because of the new instant messaging applications that are popping up all the time. Security of instant messaging has become a bigger concern over the last few months, and the self-destruct function certainly seems to be a nod to those concerns.

The addition also gets rid of one aspect of the application that might have been holding it back. While being able to send and receive photos and videos easily is always fun, not being able to comment on them in real time was likely holding some people back from using Snapchat. That isn’t a problem anymore.