Snapchat Memories: the photo messaging service is less ephemeral than ever

Snapchat's latest feature is a shot across the bow at Facebook and Instagram, and has the social media firm aiming higher than ever before

Snapchat is taking on Apple, Google and Facebook, and moving ever further away from its roots as an "ephemeral" messaging platform, with its latest feature: Memories.

Snapchat users can now decide to save their snaps, both still and video, to a new section of the app, accessed by swiping up from the camera screen. From there they can also search for other saved photos, both chronologically and with text keywords - Snapchat suggests "Hawaii" and "dog", for example. It's smarter than simple keyword searches, and is able to recognise objects in the pictures, but don't expect Google-level smart searches just yet.