LOS ANGELES: Between competition from TikTok, copycat features at Instagram and lost ad revenue during the war in Ukraine, Snapchat is searching for a hot new thing to win users back.

Enter the Snap camera drone.

The makers of the self-destructing photo app are doubling down on fun camera devices and experimenting with a new flying mini-camera.

In an effort to render the selfie stick obsolete with drone technology, Snap’s compact device, called Pixy, works with several preset flight programmes, Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel announced on Thursday.

The camera drone follows you around, takes photos and videos and then lands on the palm of your hand.

Snap says for now the small camera drone will cost US$229 and will only be available in the US and France while supplies last.

Snapchat first rose to fame with an app that lets you share photos that deleted themselves after being viewed. But the social media platform’s key features have since became replicated on the likes of Instagram and WhatsApp, and the operating company Snap has has since tried to reinvent itself with augmented reality (AR).

Using this tech, the company’s app lets users see digital images and objects on top of what they can see through their smartphone’s camera.

Snap is also making a business out of it: For example, users can try on fashion items and cosmetics using their smartphone screen. During the pandemic’s lockdowns, home shopping features like these became even more popular.

Spiegel told dpa that he was convinced that such AR shopping would continue to be used more and more and said brands are now investing heavily in the feature.

But in addition to expanding the app, Snap is also experimenting with hardware. First came a set of glasses with a built-in camera, but their popularity waned relatively quickly.

Last year, Snap also became a pioneer in AR glasses, where digital content is superimposed on the user’s field of vision. The so-called Spectacles with AR function have been available to developers and content creators for a year.

At the Snap Partners Summit developer event on April 28, a demo for the glasses showed how they can now recognise text that the user pointed at with their hand.

 - dpa