According to an interesting interview, Evan Spiegel claims that “evolving really quickly is part of the job here”. This statement rings particularly true these days, with Instagram Stories officially surpassing Snapchat in active users and other reports which claims that influencers are fleeing the hyped platform.

During the past few weeks Snapchat launched a series of updates, most notably its artsy lens and a new tool to manipulate and change the colour of the sky in Snaps. Not too bad, one may say, however these changes are part of the drill – and will eventually be copied by Facebook Inc. The real deal is to change the platform itself.

This is why Snapchat is now launching its new feature, named “Context Cards”. It’s not groundbreaking to be honest, but it provides deeper integration with third party apps and platforms, which may turn out to be the life saving vest Snap Inc could possibly need.

Context Cards basically enhance the swipe up capability already present in the app. Users will be able to swipe up to some snaps and see more info or connect with other services such as Lyft, Uber, OpenTable or Resy (editors note: AirBnB works with Resy, too) . Does this go beyond Snapchat’s main premise?

There are many among us who could claim so, however, let’s not forget that the app introduced links to its snaps, back in July, effectively stating that the image is not the medium anymore and admitting that users want to discover content and information on their app. Under this lens, yes, Snapchat only added an enhancement to the current modus operandi.

But the answer is much more complex than that. Ever since its IPO and Facebook’s relentless race to practically copy the app, Evan Spiegel and Snap Inc. are steering the shift towards well known paths (links to snaps and Context Cards), but also towards uncharted territories (read Selfie Drones), that could potentially liberate the company from the app’s demise.