Snapchat Officially Launches its New ‘Snapchat+’ a paid subscription Option

Snapchat, a Social media giant, has officially launched its paid subscription plan called Snapchat+ that will offer exclusive features like the ability to change the app icon and being able to see which people have rewatched your Stories. The company says the features will be available at $3.99 per month.

The new subscription plan will roll out first in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates; Snapchat will add additional countries.

The company confirmed the news: “Today we’re launching Snapchat+, a collection of exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features available in Snapchat for $3 99/month. This subscription will allow us to deliver new Snapchat features to some of the most passionate members of our community and allow us to provide prioritized support.”

This might not be unconnected with the current economic crunch, particularly in Europe, leading to reduced ad spending on the app, so it becomes imperative for the company to meet its revenue projection. Despite the social media company recording stellar growth numbers in Q1 2022, it expressed concerns about achieving its revenue projection because of the war in  Ukraine. In May, the company feared it might miss its revenue goals for Q2 2022.

However, the company’s SVP of Product, Jacob Andreou, in an interview with The Verge, said “ads are going to be at the core of our business model for the long term,” and the firm doesn’t expect the new subscription service to be a “material new revenue source.”

The Snapchat+ offering

• Access to exclusive Snapchat icons.
• A new profile badge to show you’re a Snapchat+ user.
• New data insights include seeing your friend’s location history (over the last 24 hours) and info on who rewatched your Story.
• The capacity to pin a user in the app as ‘your #1 best friend.’

The paid option is gradually becoming a thing with social media platforms. For example, Telegram had earlier this month rolled out a paid premium tier with features; additional chat folders and the ability to send larger files (up to 4GB in size) over the app.

Although, Snap’s offer is very similar to Twitter’s ‘Twitter Blue’ add-on package, launched last year in Canada and Australia, and later expanding it to the U.S. and New Zealand, enabling Twitter users to pay $2.99 per month for access to similar tools.

But Twitter Blue take-up has been good so far. However, in its most recent performance update, Twitter reported that its revenue from subscriptions and other non-advertising sources totaled $94 million in Q4 21, which decreased 31% for this year- ver-year. That suggests Twitter Blue isn’t gaining any traction n at all. At the same time, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has also said that Twitter has not hit ‘intermediate milestones that enable confidence’ with its new revenue and growth projects, like Twitter Blue.