Snap has picked up a small drone business, which means we could all soon be Snapchatting from the air.
Disappearing photos and videos might not always (or ever) be profitable, which is why representatives of Snapchat parent company Snap have spoken about spreading out into other areas – and one of those other areas could well be drones.
We first got word that a Snapchat drone could be on the cards back in March, when anonymous sources speaking to the New York Times said the company was busy working on its own drone, ready to capture photos and videos from the skies.
Now Buzzfeed reports that Snap has picked up Ctrl Me Robotics, a small LA-based drone manufacturer, for the relatively cheap price of $1 million. That should give the makers of Snapchat some extra expertise for their push into the drone market.
At this stage it’s not clear if Snap would ever put its own drone on sale or just make software or attachments for other devices, but it now seems clear that the company’s push into hardware is going to go way beyond Snapchat Spectacles .
We also don’t know whether Ctrl Me Robotics ever got to the stage of making its own drones, but it was certainly working on custom products and software for other drones, enabling filmmakers to get the best possible shots from the air – and that definitely sounds like something Snap would be interested in.
We’ve no official comment from Snap yet, so the guessing game about where it’s planning to go with its drone technology continues. As soon as something new is officially announced, no doubt Facebook will try to copy it.
