After about eleven years of giving its users free access, Snapchat has officially launched a paid version. Snapchat+ was launched today.
This tier has new features including being able to change the app icon. You can also track people who rewatched your Snapchat stories. Interestingly, you can also pin one of your friends to the top of your chat history as a “BFF”.
Earlier this month, the company confirmed that it was testing this new function. Now, Snapchat+ is official.
At the moment, this new function will launch only in America, New Zealand, Canada, France, the UK, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The company also intends to add other international locations soon.
Even in these countries where it has already launched, this new paid subscription is optional. According to a report on The Verge, Jacob Audreou who is the SVP of Product said that the subscription is geared toward “the people who spend most of their time communicating with their closest friends on Snap”.
This is the point where we remind you that Snapchat is not the first/only social app to introduce a paid version. Twitter and Telegram recently did the same.
The conflict in Ukraine caused concerns for Snapchat regarding hitting its income targets even though it had stellar development numbers in the first quarter of the year. It had also complained a month ago about slowing revenue growth. Nonetheless, Mr Andreou says that this decision of a paid version is not an urgent thought or decision. His words were that his team had been thinking of a paid version even from 2016, at least.
In summary,
Presently, no one knows how Snapchat plans to differentiate between features released for free users and those for subscribers. Anyways, they’ll come up with something. When we grab that information, you’ll be the first to know.
We are quite sure that this is great news for lovers of Snapchat. They can now enjoy this upgrade if they can pay $3.99.
Furthermore, this can also be a wake-up call for African tech startups. They can start building similar apps since there aren’t too many of these apps available.
