After Twitter and Twitter Blue, it’s up to Snapchat to prepare its premium subscription: Snapchat+. With this paid service, users of the social network will have access to new features. Among them, the possibility of knowing who has watched their stories again or seeing where their friends have been in the last 24 hours on the Snap Map, the connected map of the application.
What advantages for Snapchat+?
It was mobile developer and engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, known on Twitter for his many discoveries on social networks, who unveiled the premium service. Snapchat admitted to trying it.
Meta is rethinking Facebook
Preview of the badge for Snapchat+ subscribers. Image: Alessandro Paluzzi / Snapchat.
Snapchat+ subscribers will have access to several mostly cosmetic features, such as:
- Exclusive app icons
- A badge on their profile indicating that they use Snapchat+
- The ability to pin a friend as “best friend number 1”
- See how many people have rewatched their stories
- See where their friends have been in the last 24 hours
Regarding the last point, Alessandro Paluzzi precise that ” this will only be possible if your friends share their location with you, of course “.
Here are the different app icons that Snapchat+ users will be able to use. Image: Alessandro Paluzzi / Snapchat.
In a statement addressed to The Verge, a Snap spokesperson details the company’s ambitions. ” We are currently conducting initial internal testing of Snapchat+, a new subscription service for Snapchatters. We’re excited to be able to share exclusive, experimental and preview features with our subscribers, and to learn more about how we can better serve our community. “, he explains.
The price of the service should range from 4.59 euros per month to 45.99 euros per year.
Potential Snapchat+ pricing. Image: Alessandro Paluzzi / Snapchat.
Social networks are looking for new revenue channels
If many social networks are opting for premium subscription services, it is partly because of Apple’s new policy. The Apple brand introduced App Tracking Transparency in April, a feature that gives users the ability to choose whether they want to share their data with an app for advertising purposes.
For Snapchat, these policy changes had an impact “ bigger than expected on its advertising business during the third quarter of 2021. The company missed revenue estimates by $3 million. Evan Spiegel, Founder and CEO of Snapchat, explained that “ although we anticipated some degree of business disruption, the evolution of the App Store has not evolved as we expected “.
With the arrival of Snapchat+, the social networking giant hopes to diversify its sources of income. However, nothing indicates that these services are very lucrative. For comparison, Twitter’s premium subscription, Twitter Blue, reportedly earned just $94 million in the final quarter of 2021. A 31% drop from 2020, an indicator of relative public enthusiasm on premium subscriptions.