Snapchat’s ‘Reals’ joke mocks Instagram’s many ripoffs
It's April Fools' Day, and Snap is using the occasion to "announce" that it's switching the name of Snapchat's Spotlight feed, the app's Instagram Reels-like feed of shortform vertical videos, to "Reals." In a video featuring co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, Snap also includes a description of "Reals" as a place where "real people share […]
Jay Peters
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
It’s April Fools’ Day, and Snap is using the occasion to “announce” that it’s switching the name of Snapchat’s Spotlight feed, the app’s Instagram Reels-like feed of shortform vertical videos, to “Reals.”
In a video featuring co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, Snap also includes a description of “Reals” as a place where “real people share real moments. Really.” Spiegel adds that “People feel free to be their full selves and to keep it Real on Snapchat” (In the video’s captions, Snap capitalized “Real”).
Spiegel also used the video to remind users about its ephemeral Stories format — which, like TikTok’s vertical video feed, Instagram ripped off. “For years, people have used Snapchat for visual communication, and self-expression, to watch Stories of their friends, and that authenticity and connection is what’s made Snapchat so special.” Snap got to Stories — name included — first, although I should also note that Spotlight followed both TikTok and Instagram’s shortform video feeds.
Again: it’s April Fools’ Day, so I’m guessing the switch to “Reals” is a joke. The number of “real” puns in Spiegel’s video seems like pretty good evidence, too. Just to make sure, I’ve reached out to Snap to confirm. But for now, “Reals” seems to be real; in the Snapchat iOS app, the feed has switched over to the “Reals” name for me already.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
- Jay Peters
The Verge AI
https://www.theverge.com/tech/905272/snapchat-reals-spotlight-instagram-feed-april-fools-day-2026Sign in to highlight and annotate this article
Conversation starters
Daily AI Digest
Get the top 5 AI stories delivered to your inbox every morning.
More about
announce
I Compared Make.com and n8n Across 20+ Client Deployments. Here Is My Verdict.
A client came to me in January with a Make.com scenario that had started as a simple lead routing workflow and mutated into a 47-step monster. It was timing out. It was burning through their operations credits. And when they needed to add an AI agent that could make decisions based on their CRM data, Make had no good answer. Three weeks later, after rebuilding the whole thing in n8n, their monthly automation bill dropped by 71% and the AI agent actually worked. That project pushed me to do something I had been putting off: a real, systematic comparison of Make.com and n8n for AI agent workflows. Not a feature checklist review. A practitioner's assessment built on two years of deploying both platforms across more than 20 client environments. Here is what I found, and more importantly, here
Silverback AI Chatbot Announces Development of AI Assistant Feature to Support Automated Digital Interaction and Workflow Management - Corpus Christi Caller-Times
Silverback AI Chatbot Announces Development of AI Assistant Feature to Support Automated Digital Interaction and Workflow Management Corpus Christi Caller-Times
Knowledge Map
Connected Articles — Knowledge Graph
This article is connected to other articles through shared AI topics and tags.
Discussion
Sign in to join the discussion
No comments yet — be the first to share your thoughts!