Snapchat has become the newest platform to introduce a paid subscription called “Snapchat Plus” which offers exclusive features to users. The paid-for service will give users early access to the facilities.
A spokesperson for Snap said, “We are excited about the ability to share exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features with our customers, and learn more about how we can best serve our community.”
Snapchat Plus costs €4.59 per month and €45.99 per year (just under £4 for a month or £40 for a year), although it is possible that this could change.
Snap’s chief financial officer; Derek Anderson, who spoke to investors last year said:
“It is not clear yet what the longer-term impact of those changes may be for the topline momentum of our business, and this may not be clear until several months or more after the changes are implemented.”
More and more apps are changing their business model to subscriptions in an attempt to have a recurring source of profit.
Snapchat isn’t the only high-profile technology company that has announced premium versions of its apps. Telegram recently announced that it is working on a subscription model with its standard free version.
“After some thought, we realized that the only way for our most demanding fans to get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those increased limits a paid option,” said founder Pavel Durov. written in the channel.
Features may include increased file upload size, faster download speeds, voice-to-text conversion, premium stickers, and advanced chat management features.
Twitter is also working on its premium version called Blue, which will feature a reader mode and customizable app icons, along with undoing tweets and a bookmark collection of posts.
Snapchat and other apps have had to make changes since iOS 14, which introduced new privacy features — requiring developers to get permission before their ads can be tracked.