Snapchat just made it super-easy to create your own geofilter

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Snapchat
Snapchat got some smart new features this week.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Creating your own Snapchat geofilter for parties and other special occasions just got a whole lot easier thanks to a new web-based tool Snapchat unleashed on the world today.

With competition intensifying from Instagram’s new Stories feature, Snapchat is expanding the revenue it gets from geofilters by charging a small fee to create your own for a short period of time. The tool lets users either upload their own art or modify existing templates, setting up custom filters to be the next big thing.

snapchat geo-filter creation tool
Creating a geo-filter only takes four steps.
Photo: Snapchat

The new On-Demand Geofilters tool, lets you customize templates divided into three categories: Celebrations, Birthdays and Weddings. You can add and delete text from the templates and change the color palette to see what it looks like before purchasing the filter.

Once the geofilter is customized, you then choose which dates you want the filter to appear on for all users in the area. The more days you add the more costly it gets.

snapchat fence
Draw a box where you want your filter to appear. Photo: Snapchat

During the next step you’re asked to draw a fence around the area you want your filter to be visible in. Fencing out a few blocks can cost upwards of $100 per day, but if you only fence out the area around your house it’s about $5–$10. A pretty cheap price to help you look cool at millennial birthday parties, business celebrations or weddings.

One could also imagine the new tool could be used on entire neighborhoods by trolls and pranksters for more nefarious purposes.

Along with the new geofilter-creation tool, Snapchat made some improvements to its iOS app, including options in captions to italicize, bold or underline text. Captions can also be animated and you only have to tap on your face once now to use lenses.

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