Snapchat Reportedly Buys Bitmoji App Bitstrips for $100 million
Snapchat is buying Bitstrips for ~$100 million, the company behind the Bitmoji app that has grown in popularity over the past couple of years, allow the user to create an avatar of themselves to share on social media and over text, according to a source familiar with the deal.
A report by Fortune points out that Bitstrips was originally introduced in 2007 to help users build personalized digital comics, and is based in Toronto. However, it is not clear yet what the Snapchat plans to do with Bitstrips but it feels like a good fit for the company, which has a number of other fun features to help users neat up their photos and videos. Snapchat allows users to put emojis on photos and videos they send and has generated a lot of buzz for facial filters that let people distort their faces into different animals or characters. Bitstrips had raised $3 million in funding in 2013.
Bitstrips can be used to create avatars of yourself. The user can choose what user avatar wears and how it looks. Some have successfully managed to make a lot of these avatars look like themselves. Bitstrips even has an iOS and Android app for users to make comics on the go.
Users download an app and then pick from a variety of face shapes, skin colors, and other features that often result in eerily accurate portrayals. These “bitmojis” then can be put into various different poses or with different accessories, and are readily accessible for mobile communications.
Creator Jacob "Ba" Blackstock nailed it when he said: "I really believe Bitmoji is the next level beyond emoji - and what we're seeing from users is that they're not looking back".