New Alerts Beyond Home Safe
After adding a “Home Safe” option that lets users notify contacts when they arrive home, Snapchat said it is introducing “Arrival Notifications” to cover other destinations. The company announced on Monday that users can now set one-time or recurring alerts for locations beyond their home, creating an automatic way to share when they arrive at specific places.
Snapchat said the feature is meant for routine situations such as letting someone know you are back at a hotel while traveling or confirming arrival at a regular class, practice, or meeting, without needing to send a manual message.
Who Can Receive Notifications
As with Home Safe, Arrival Notifications can only be sent to friends a user chooses to share their location with. Snapchat said location sharing on Snap Map is turned off by default, and no one can see a user’s location or receive alerts unless the user enables sharing. One-time alerts expire after they are sent or after 24 hours.
How To Set Up The Feature
To use Arrival Notifications, a user must first share their location with a trusted friend. The user then taps on the friendship profile, scrolls to “Arrival Notifications,” selects a location on the map, and assigns it a custom name, such as a weekly class or a club meeting. The user can choose whether the alert runs once or on a recurring basis, after which Snapchat sends a notification when the user arrives.
Snap Map Usage And Product Context
The update follows Snapchat’s announcement last summer that Snap Map has more than 400 million monthly active users. Snap Map launched in 2017 as a way to see friends’ locations and browse public posts from around the world, and it has since added features for discovering local spots and activities.
Competition And Platform Positioning
With Home Safe and Arrival Notifications, Snapchat is adding tools that overlap with services such as the family location-sharing app Life360 and Apple’s Find My. The company said the new alerts are designed to work within its existing location-sharing controls.
Featured image credits: Flickr
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