Snapchat introduces new way to save old snaps

Snapchat Inc. has cooked up yet another feature to keep users inside its smartphone app. On Wednesday, Snapchat introduced Memories, which will let people save their favorite snaps—the normally disappearing photos and videos they share.

Think of Memories as a camera roll inside Snapchat itself. This new feature lets you, for the first time, not only save your snaps long-term, but re-edit them with filters and text, then re-share them. Previously, you could save your pictures and videos by downloading them to your smartphone, but you couldn’t view them in the app or send them as snaps or stories. You still can’t save a snap sent to you from someone else, unless you break a cardinal rule of Snapchat by taking a screenshot.

Snapchat also has a new search function for Memories that lets you find old photos and video by date, location or even the contents of the image—keywords like “dog,” “Hawaii,” or “January 2015.” By creating a bank of photos and videos, Snapchat users will help train the company’s object recognition technology to sort snaps visually. This could help the Los Angeles-based startup enter the machine-learning battleground already populated by Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

Memories is rolling out over the next month, a Snapchat spokeswoman said. Once your app is updated, you’ll access your archive of saved snaps by swiping up from the app’s camera screen. If you reshare a photo or video from Memories, there will be a frame around it, signaling to friends that it is older than a day.

Memories is the latest example of Snapchat moving beyond its raw beginnings, finding new ways to extend the lifespan of media shared inside the app, and more reasons for people to hang out inside it. Live Stories, launched in 2014, corrals on-topic snaps from users across the world, while the Discover section, launched a year later, features curated publisher content (including WSJ video and stories).

Despite maturing, Snapchat occasionally lapses back to a more awkward phase. Take, for instance, this video used to introduce Memories. Just be warned: You won’t be able to unsee it later.

In the vignette, a young woman and her boyfriend use her phone to show vacation pictures to her parents, flipping through the new Memories section. After a few typical tropical poses, the images get slightly more risqué. The father says, “Oh hey,” and hands back the phone. His daughter quickly adds the offending image to the passcode-protected My Eyes Only section of Memories.

Cringe-worthy drama aside, the video highlights the two sides of Snapchat: a haven for in-the-moment millennials and a new attraction for tech-savvy older audiences. ComScore estimates that 14% of U.S. smartphone users 34 or older use the app, while about 38% of 25- to 34-year-olds do.

So far, Snapchat has experienced immense growth in both user base and valuation. In May, following a $1.8 billion funding round, it was valued at nearly $18 billion.