Snapchat introduced a paid version of the Snapchat application in the US on Wednesday, priced at $3.99 per month and limited to other markets; it is a significant step away from an income model primarily dependent on advertising.
Snapchat, which had hinted at the subscription version, Snapchat+, earlier this month, announced that the paid service would be functional in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates at launch.
Social media enterprises are under pressure as companies cut back on ad budgets due to increasing costs and diminishing consumer spending.
Last month, Snapchat announced that it “would miss revenue and profit targets for the second quarter and would have to slow hiring and lower spending, sending its shares down over 40 percent in a single day.”
Jacob Andreou told tech news site The Verge, “Initial features in the paid version include the ability to change the app’s icon, see who re-watched a story and pin other users on chat history as a ‘BFF’,” He is Snap’s senior vice president of product.
In addition to the paid service, the social media platform has initiated many new features lately. It declared a new Shared Stories functionality that enables users who have already been added to a Shared Stories group to invite different Snapchatters into that group to watch and contribute to the story. Furthermore, Snap expanded its alliance with ShareChat’s Moj to integrate its AR Camera Kit within MX TakaTak. With this, the MX TakaTak app now extends the ability to access new camera features powered by Snapchat’s augmented reality (AR) technology.