Have you been seeing Snapchat’s popular dancing hot dog AR filter wandering around in real life? You might not be seeing things, because the favorite filter is now an actual product you can buy. Snap Inc. just launched an entirely new product — a hot dog Halloween costume. That’s right, you can now dress up as the Snapchat dancing hotdog augmented reality filter, if you want to spend $80 on your holiday get-up, that is.
The costume launched on Amazon earlier this week with Snap, Inc. listed as the seller, and the social media company recently confirmed that it was behind the costume launch. Snap is touting the costume as a way to dress up as “the world’s first augmented reality superstar.”
The two-piece costume is made from polyester, or if you believe the somewhat tongue-in-cheek description, 100-percent beef. The costume fits best on ages 14 and up, so long as the wearer is shorter than six foot four, and comes in two pieces.
Despite only listing on Amazon for a few days, the dancing hot dog costume has already become one of those Amazon pages that will probably drive visitors to the site just to read the reviews, as a hot dog costume is prime inspiration for online review comedians, with claims of getting promoted after wearing the costume to work, and listing the dancing hotdog among achievements equivalent to landing on the moon.
While Snapchat has since launched a number of different augmented reality World Filters, that dancing hot dog is arguably the most iconic. The platform added animated characters, expanding beyond selfie masks, almost a year ago now. Once the dancing hot dog launched in app, it quickly rose to internet fame. In fact, that dancing piece of processed meat has already inspired a mobile game aptly called Dancing Hot Dog that tests your ability to stack multiple dancing hot dogs.
Last year, Snap Spectacles expanded the company from a photo-sharing platform to a platform for taking photos, too. Although Snap Inc. has started calling itself a camera company, so far the firm has only released Spectacles and related accessories. That, of course, and a hot dog costume.
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
I have lost count of how many times I have gone to bed thinking I will finally sleep on time, only to somehow end up scrolling Instagram or X again. A few minutes turn into an hour, then another, and before I notice, it is 2 or 3 a.m. The next morning, I am usually annoyed with myself because I could have just slept and felt considerably better for the day ahead.
It is also a surprisingly hard habit to beat. Knowing you should put the phone down does not always help once it is already in your hand. Brick Night is a new gadget built around that exact problem. Instead of relying on you to remember to turn on an app blocker, it automatically restricts selected apps and websites when your phone enters your chosen sleep space during the hours you set.