Well, it’s official… Snapchat jumped on the paid-teir wagon with today’s launch of Snapchat+. Joining the emerging crop of paid tiers in the social world – such as Twitter Blue – the subscription offers premium perks for power users. It will cost $3.99 per month and roll out immediately.
Going deeper on the features and “perks” noted above, they include deeper analytics on published Stories. For example, subscribers can see who rewatched a given story, which can be valuable for Snapchat power users and brand marketers that want to optimize content output or retarget audiences.
The subscription also offers experimental and pre-release features, which may appeal to a certain set of Snapchat users. But this also makes it seem like Snap is making users pay to beta test upcoming features. We’ll spend some time examining this for a fair assesment as it develops in the coming weeks.
We say that, simply because the feature details are still somewhat scant. Earlier reports on the paid tier revealed a but more, such as special badges and icons, pinning profiles of close friends for easy access to messaging threads, deeper analytics on who’s viewing your stories, and location tracking.
Here’s the extent of what Snapchat reports today in terms of features:
“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.”
Live Market Experiment
As we reported during speculation phases of this new rollout, there are several factors driving it including revenue diversification. Snap wants to seek new revenue streams as it gets larger and core revenue matures. This is similar to Twitter’s motivations behind Blue, though it’s a bit more mature as a company.
Snap is also likely looking for ways to get Wall Street excited. Despite recent rallies, its stock has fallen throughout 2022, along with the broader market (and especially software). Like Meta and others, it’s feeling an additional sting from privacy reform and ensuing platform restrictions from iOS and Android.
There’s also a generally-rising backlash against ad-supported businesses, which amplifies all the above. Though Snap and many others weren’t necessarily bad actors with personal data misuse, there’s a push against the broader cohort of ad-supported businesses, compelling things like subscription offers.
In that light, Snapchat+ can be seen as a bit of an experiment. Though market pressures push towards less ad revenue models, it’s not a foregone conclusion that consumers actually want paid/premium content. That will have to be tested through live market experiments like Snapchat+ and Twitter Blue.
Meanwhile, Snapchat + will launch in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with more countries to be added in the coming weeks. We’ll watch closely for that, and any other signals of its feature details and traction.
