What does the new hourglass emoji mean on Snapchat? App reveals timer symbol to scare friends into talking

The feature is intended to terrify people into chatting, by making them worry that they’re about to lose their ‘snapstreak’

Hundreds of thousands of Snapchat images were leaked In October 2014 (Flickr)

Snapchat has updated its service with a range of new features — including one meant to make people terrified into sending more messages.

The new update mostly brings new chat features, to make the app better at taking on apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. But it also makes a slight change to the system of emoji that the app uses.

Last year, the site added emoji next to people’s names as a way of describing people’s relationships, with specific characters for the people that users send snaps to most. And one of those was the fire emoji, which represented a “snapstreak” — a run of days when people have sent messages to each other.

Now the site has added a new picture: the hourglass. That character comes up when a snapstreak is about to come to an end, encouraging people to send another snap before the snapstreak is over.

The company’s official account confirmed that the hourglass meant that a streak was about to come to an end. But it didn’t clarify exactly how long before the streak ended it would pop up.

The site appears to have found that snapstreaks are a good way of encouraging people to keep sending pictures to one another. They can only be collected by repeatedly opening and using the app.