Plans for a Snapchat Plus paid subscription were uncovered by a developer earlier this month, pushing the company to confirm that the option was in testing. Snap has today announced that the subscription is official, and launching this week …
Background
We first learned of plans for Snapchat Plus a couple of weeks ago, when developer and researcher Alessandro Paluzzi spotted code being tested by the social network. The company quickly confirmed his findings.
Details about Snapchat Plus were first found by developer and researcher Alessandro Paluzzi. A Snap spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the company has been doing internal tests of a new subscription plan that will provide exclusive features on the Snapchat app for users, as well as early access to new public features.
“We’re doing early internal testing of Snapchat Plus, a new subscription service for Snapchatters. We’re excited about the potential to share exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features with our subscribers, and learn more about how we can best serve our community.”
Snapchat Plus paid subscription
If the feature was indeed in “early” testing, the company appears to have made a snap decision to go ahead. Snap has now revealed details to The Verge.
Starting this week, Snap will begin offering an optional subscription called Snapchat Plus that unlocks exclusive and early access features.
Priced at $3.99 a month, the subscription is geared toward “the people who spend most of their time communicating with their closest friends on Snap,” the company’s SVP of Product, Jacob Andreou, tells The Verge.
But if you were hoping for an ad-free experience, you’re going to be disappointed. The company claims it won’t make any significant money from the subscription, and that ads will remain.
Andreou says there aren’t expectations for Plus to become a “material new revenue source” […] and “ads are going to be at the core of our business model for the long term.”
So what do you get for your four buck a month? Not much.
Snapchat Plus is mostly a cosmetic upgrade. The most notable features include the ability to change the style of the app’s icon, see who rewatched a story, and pin one of your friends to the top of your chat history as a “BFF” […]
Going forward, Andreou says that “single-playerish” features like the BFF pin will likely remain gated to Plus subscribers, while features that rely on interactions with others will eventually be released to the whole user base.
Snapchat Plus will roll out this week in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Photo; Souvik Banerjee/Unsplash
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