Starting Friday morning, Snapchat’s Snap Map — Snap’s real-time map that shows you where your friends are in the world — will be transformed into what Snap is hailing the “Great Snapchat Egg Hunt!” What is the “Great Snapchat Egg Hunt!” you ask? Great question. Users will be able to see eggs “hidden” all over their Snap Map, but will have to visit those places IRL to collect the egg. Snap says to look in public places, “such as local coffee shops, shopping centres, airports, college campuses and amusement parks.”
When you’re near an egg, open the app and tap the egg on the map. It’ll open a special 3-D lens on the rear-facing camera so you can take a picture. Each egg is worth one point, except if you find a golden egg. Those are worth five. The game is scored and lasts until Sunday night. Snapchat says it’ll keep score and show you where you stack up against other users — both your friends and snappers around the world — in the upper-right-hand corner of the map. If you’re in Ghost Mode, as in your location is not shared, you can still play, but your score won’t be visible to anyone but you. Which seems silly since you don’t actually win anything but bragging rights playing this dumb game, anyway. But also not silly because if we’ve learned anything from Facebook this month, it’s that maybe it’s better to not willingly surrender personal info, like your location, to tech giants. Unclear if this game will be enough to lure back the growing list of celebrities — Chrissy Teigen, Rihanna, and Kylie Jenner among them — who have publicly abandoned the platform in recent weeks.
