Snapchat gained some exciting new features last week, including the ability to have real-time conversations with live video, and it's all thanks to a quiet acquisition of AddLive.
Messaging service Snapchat has been through a lot since its debut back in 2011, and has notably evolved ever since. The latest improvements came to the service last week, finally adding text messaging and the ability to video chat live for real-time conversations.
The new Snapchat video feature sports a neat design that received high praise from users, but it's also worth pointing out that it's impressively fast. Users can activate video chat between any two devices within mere seconds, even across different platforms.
In order to achieve this great video chat performance, Snapchat has quietly acquired specialized company AddLive. Snapchat didn't issue an official press release regarding this matter, but has confirmed the acquisition to The Verge.
"We are excited to welcome the AddLive team to the Snapchat family. We have no further comment at this time," Snapchat briefly told The Verge. It remains unclear at this point just when this acquisition took place, but it likely occurred sometime in the past few months.
AddLive is a well-known leader when it comes to video communication in the browser space. The company relies on WebRTC, a powerful project that enables browsers to communicate in real time using simple JavaScript APIs. Confirming its leadership in this space, AddLive won the "Best WebRTC Tool" award at the 2013 WebRTC Conference and Expo.
If Snapchat acquired AddLive just a few months ago, the company really moved fast to integrate real-time communication within its service without much delay. At the same time, this acquisition means that Snapchat will likely continue to improve its real-time chat offerings, as AddLive's technology can lead to even greater things.
AddLive, for instance, also specializes in multi-party conferencing and screen-sharing, which means that Snapchat may evolve in the future to include video group chat options or even interactive Snap screens.
For the time being, however, the ability to finally have real-time conversations via Snapchat instead of having to use a different service has been realty appreciated. There's no word at this point when or if Snapchat will add more features with the support of AddLive, but it would be a logical step. In the meantime, watch the video below to see the new Snapchat in action.
