Snapchat bought Bitstrips, the startup behind Bitmoji, back in March. The acquisition was worth a reported $100 million, but at the time, how the product would be integrated wasn’t clear. Today, Snapchat finally acknowledged the acquisition and revealed how it would integrate Bitstrips’ product: Users can now send their Bitmoji to each other either in chat or in snaps.
We saw this coming – Snapchat added sticker support to its app shortly following the report of it buying Bitstrips – but there was nothing we could do to stop it, which means you’ll just have to deal with those cartoonish emojis showing up in your snaps.
Bitmoji, for the uninitiated, allows users to create their own personal emoji with passing resemblance to their real flesh human face, which they can then use in messaging apps to express person feelings like “Surprise!” and “Disappointment.”
Now, users can link their Bitmoji account in Snapchat using their credentials and the avatar they created will appear in the app ready to use. If a user doesn’t have Bitmoji already, you can log in with Snapchat to set one up. As a wonderful or terrifying bonus, depending on your perspective, if your friends have Bitmoji linked to their Snapchat, you’ll be able to ‘Friendmoji’ them, too, which means you can use their emojified avatar stickers as well. This is just the beginning, though; we can expect to see Snapchat’s Bitmoji integration evolve over time.
Snapchat even made an entire comic about the whole thing. This might be the first time an acquisition has been officially announced that way, so I had to include the whole thing below.
As an acquirer, Snapchat has a history of scooping up smaller companies that it thinks will make great features for the app; it’s a fair assumption to speculate that recent hits like Prisma could be next.
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