Snapchat Introduces Place Loyalty Badges to Reward Frequent Snap Map Visitors
Snapchat has rolled out Place Loyalty badges, a feature that celebrates users who frequently visit specific locations on Snap Map. Based on visit activity over the past year, users in the top 25% of visitors to a place will see their ranking and receive gold, silver, or bronze badges. These badges are private by default but can be shared as stickers. The feature aims to boost engagement and may provide brands with more visitor data, though privacy concerns remain.
Snapchat has introduced a new feature designed to encourage repeat visits to locations listed on its Snap Map: Place Loyalty badges. These badges celebrate the places each user visits most frequently, as announced in an official Snapchat newsroom post.
So if you really liked Foursquare, this is for you.
The loyalty badges will showcase places on a map where a user is the top visitor, based on activity. This could make the feature another competitive, compulsive in-app element, similar to Snap Streaks.
As explained by Snapchat: “Place Loyalty highlights when you’re among the most frequent visitors to a place on Snap Map over the past year. Loyalty is determined by visits, and if you’re in the top 25% of Snapchatters who visit that place, you’ll see your ranking.”
Snapchat will award gold, silver, and bronze badges for the top visitors to key locations, showcasing the people who regularly return to the same spot.
“Are you a Gold-tier regular at your local café? A Silver-level airport pro? Now you’ll know,” Snapchat said.
These badges will not be publicly viewable on the Snap Map; instead, they will only be displayed to individual users. However, top visitors will be able to generate a shareable sticker they can post in the app to showcase their leadership positions.
This could make it a competitive element, even without a public display of top visitors.
Though it could also be a concern for stalkers, or anyone looking to track where somebody might be in the app. Snapchat, as always, is being careful with this, and only allowing people to view their own top spot ranking, sharing that with their friends if they choose. But if this information were to be re-shared with somebody outside a user’s circle, it could also be problematic.
It’s unclear whether the potential engagement benefits outweigh the concerns. But Snapchat clearly sees value in it, and it might also enable Snap to provide more data to brands on visitors, based on more users enabling location tracking for this element.
Underlining the new feature, Snapchat has also shared listings of the most visited locations in L.A. and New York, highlighting where these badges will be displayed.
It seems like a minor competitive element, but Snapchat clearly believes that this will help to drive visits, which could help it then drive more brand engagement activity.