Snapchat Secretly Bought a Company to Support Its Version of FaceTime
Snapchat added some killer new features last week: text messaging and their take on FaceTime video chat. The new Snapchat video feature is impressive not only in design, but in speed. Within seconds, video chat can be activated between any two devices, using any two different platforms. In order to achieve this, Snapchat turned to AddLive, quietly acquiring the company sometime in the past few months.
Snapchat confirmed the acquisition of AddLive to The Verge, but didn't have much else to say: "We are excited to welcome the AddLive team to the Snapchat family. We have no further comment at this time."
AddLive is a leader in the browser video communication space. They dominate WebRTC, a project which enables browsers to communicate in real time through simple JavaScript APIs. Their browser video technology is so impressive that AddLive was awarded the "Best WebRTC Tool" at the 2013 WebRTC Conference and Expo. On their website, AddLive advertises that it "allows companies to quickly deploy real-time communications with minimal development time." Considering that SnapChat likely purchased the company only a few months ago, they definitely came through on the promise of minimal development time.
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Snapchat's newest family member also specializes in screen-sharing and multi-party conferencing, so be on the look out for group video chat and interactive Snap screens in future updates.
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/05/snapchat-secretly-bought-a-company-to-support-its-version-of-facetime/361683/
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