Two struggling tech icons got together... The result is Bitmoji Party. Snap's launching video games with Bitmoji, the app it bought in 2016 to create custom avatars, the cuter cartoon vision of yourself. "Words With Friends" creator Zynga's adding 5 more games to Snapchat soon. All multi-player. All smartphone playable.
Engagement. Engagement. Engagement... Engagement. That's what social networks do. Snap's under pressure to add users and power engagement back up since Instagram copied its Stories in 2016. But this gaming move's not that new:
- Facebook got gaming in 2009 with Farmville. Now 700M humans game there.
- Amazon dropped $970M for the live-streaming, watch-your-buddy-pwn platform Twitch in 2014. One celebri-gamer now has 14M Twitch followers.
It always comes back to ads... A live Bitmoji Party brings physical friends together digitally, for free. And Snap rose 1% on hopes you'll love Snap-gaming so much you'll tolerate ads to earn virtual coins. Fortnite games hope you pay up for in-game purchases (picture digital you in a new costume). But ads are Snap's main game.