Snapchat+ Reaches 4 Million Subscribers a 12 months After Launch

While Twitter struggles to sell users on the worth of Twitter Blue, and Meta expands its subscription offering to more regions, it’s Snapchat that’s actually seeing probably the most success in the brand new wave of social subscriptions, with its Snapchat+ option now as much as 4 million paying subscribers, a 12 months after its initial launch.

Snapchat+ – which notably doesn’t include a verification checkmark (though it does include a Snapchat+ badge) – offers a spread of exclusive add-on features on your Snapchat presence for $3.99 monthly.

Those add-ons include:

• Access to exclusive Snapchat icons
• Improved data insights in your usage and engagement
• Priority Story replies
• Custom post view emojis
• The choice to freeze your Snap Streaks
• AI-generated profile backgrounds

Given the utility that Snap provides for its 750 million monthly energetic users, these add-ons are of serious value, because they enhance the in-app experience, with customizable elements that align with usage.

Which is why Snapchat+ has seen relatively good take up – though additionally it is price noting that 4 million is simply a tiny fraction of Snap’s overall audience.

Which is the large problem with social subscriptions. When Elon Musk unveiled Twitter Blue as a key component of his ‘Twitter 2.0’ rejuvenation plan, many analysts noted that the subscription approach had been tried or considered by various apps before, to limited enthusiasm from users.

The fundamental framework of Musk’s plan is sensible – if you happen to can charge a small amount per user, that may make it harder for bot peddlers to create thousands and thousands of profiles and use them to influence in-app discussion, because if enough users are paying, that may highlight bots versus real humans – i.e. the humans will probably be paying subscribers and the bots won’t.

The issue is, $8 monthly isn’t a small amount to a whole lot of people. And moderately than deal with adding utility into the package, Elon as a substitute opted to sell verification ticks, which immediately lost their perceived value and exclusivity through the very act of selling them.

So while a whole lot of Twitter users did wish to be verified as a type of social currency within the app, selling checkmarks essentially devalued this as a product. Mix that with a middling Twitter Blue offering, with features that almost all users don’t take care of, and it’s pretty easy to see why only 0.3% of Twitter users have signed on to pay.

Meta could also be doing higher, with its Meta Verified plan also selling checkmarks, but with an extra value-add of direct, in-person contact for account issues. That, for a lot of Meta users, is well worth the $11.99 monthly alone – though Meta hasn’t provided any stats on Meta Verifed take-up as yet.  

Yet, even at probably the most optimistic estimates, it’s unlikely that any of those subscription offerings is ever going to see take-up by greater than single-digit percentages of every app’s respective users.

For instance – YouTube Premium, which has been available for years, and offers a reasonably good value-add in no in-stream ads, reportedly currently has around 50 million subscribers. That’s out of YouTube’s 2 billion users – 2.5% of its overall audience.

At this stage, Snapchat+ is as much as 0.53% of Snap’s total user base, while Twitter Blue, as noted, is sitting at 0.3%.

It’s a superb supplemental income stream, of course, and a handy extra revenue pathway to have. But it surely’s not going to be an answer, as Elon had initially hoped.

Still, Snap seems glad with its additional revenue path, and it’s announced two latest Snapchat+ features to assist lure more subscribers in.

First off, Snap’s adding ‘expressive chat messages’, which is actually a brand new font size slider on your DMs.

It’s also adding custom chat colours to further personalize your Snap experience. 

They’re not game-changing functional additions – which is vital, because it implies that non-subscribers are still in a position to use the app in just about the identical way, so Snap doesn’t lose people through exclusion. But they do serve an additive purpose.

And with Snap playing a key connective role for its audience, there’s clearly a price to what Snapchat+ provides.