Snapchat creates starring clips for user avatars

Snap kicks off within Snapchat this weekend with Bitmoji TV, a four-minute series of clips starring the user’s avatar. The person with whom the user last contacted on Snapchat also appears in the clip.

There will initially be ten episodes of Bitmoji TV, Techcrunch writes. Users can view the clips, but not download or share them. There are also no advertisements for the time being, although it seems the intention to do so in the long term. About seventy percent of active chat app users have created a Bitmoji avatar in the past. Snap acquired the company behind Bitmoji in 2016.

The videos contain the users themselves and occasionally avatars of famous people. The protagonists themselves don’t talk, but other characters in the cartoons do. The cartoons should start appearing on Saturday for users who follow the Bitmoji TV page. The cartoons are another step for Snap to differentiate itself from the competition, especially Facebook services. Facebook copied Stories from Snapchat and put it in Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, among other things.