Snapchat is testing Cameos, a Bitmoji alternative that lets users replace the faces of people with selfies in Snapchat-made short looping videos
Context & Ripple Effects
Cameos extends a strategy Snap has been running for years: making the user's face the connective tissue of the app. Bitmoji already powers homescreen chat shortcuts and an SDK that lets game developers swap in 3D Bitmoji character skins, and the company was weeks from shipping Bitmoji TV, a cartoon show starring users' avatars. Cameos adds a lower-effort format — a selfie pasted into pre-made looping video instead of an avatar users have to design.
The timing matters because Snap isn't alone here: Facebook began building its own Avatars feature for Messenger back in May 2018, so personalized identity is now a contested surface between the two apps rather than a Snap signature.
First-order effects
- Snapchat users gain a selfie-driven alternative to Bitmoji that requires no avatar creation, lowering the effort bar for personalizing chats with looping video.
- Cameos puts Snap's own avatar franchise in internal competition — a simpler format that could cannibalize Bitmoji engagement even as Bitmoji expands into shows like Bitmoji TV.
Second-order effects
- Facebook's Avatars project faces pressure to move beyond Messenger static avatars toward richer formats, since Snap is demonstrating that identity features need video-grade expressiveness to stay sticky.
- If Cameos proves out, Snap gains another avatar surface to bundle into developer-facing products alongside the games SDK and Bitmoji TV subscriptions, deepening the ecosystem lock-in.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward personal avatars becoming platform infrastructure rather than a single sticker app — with each social platform racing to make the user's likeness portable across chat, games, and serialized content.
- As identity features proliferate across rival platforms, differentiation shifts from who has avatars to whose avatar system spans the most surfaces, favoring platforms like Snap that control both the creative tooling and the distribution.
The trend: Personalized digital identity is consolidating into multi-surface avatar platforms — spanning chat, games, and shows — as Snap and Facebook compete to own the user's likeness.