Alejandro Arrieche
Snapchat is announcing a new feature for its Snap Streaks that will allow users to take a pause in case they are expecting to be too busy for a while or if their phone signal will not be strong enough to keep them connected.
Streaks are one of the social media platform’s most popular tools. Every 24 hours, friends are prompted by the system to share a picture of them with a friend. The streak can go on for days but could be broken at any given point if one of the two users fails to share a snap after a day has passed.
Restoring Your Snap Streak Will Reportedly Cost You 99¢
Snapchatters have embraced the feature so much that the company has received e-mails from people begging to restore their streak. Snap appears to be seeing this as an opportunity to further monetize its service as it will only let users restore one lost streak for free.
“A lost Snap Streak doesn’t mean your friendship has gone cold, so starting today, we’re making it easier to take a break with a new feature we’re testing to let you reignite the spark and restore one Streak for free with just one tap”, the company commented in a short blog post where the new feature was announced.
According to the online tech-focused magazine TechCrunch, Snapchat will charge 99 cents for every additional streak the user wants to restore while Snapchat Plus users will soon have the chance to pause their streaks.
The social media platform has been busy lately as it has released several new features including a tool called “My AI” that is powered by ChatGPT and that acts as a virtual friend that Snapchatters can turn to if they need fresh ideas.
In addition, the platform recently launched a program called Sounds Recommendations for Lenses that suggests audio tracks that can be added to the different filters that Snap has made available to creators.
Users can also create TikTok-like videos with a tool called Sounds Sync for Camera Roll that lets them pool together up to 20 images to create short films with audio from the platform’s Sounds library.
Over 2 million users have reportedly subscribed to the platform’s premium program – Snapchat Plus – which costs $3.99 a month. In addition, Snapchat (SNAP) recently announced that its monthly active users (MAUs) have grown to 750 million, which puts it at a close distance from the globally embraced Chinese social media app TikTok.
Twitter and Meta Are Also Turning to Subscriptions to Generate Revenue
Other social media platforms have also been exploring ways to further monetize their large user base as is the case of Twitter, which spearheaded the subscription push by launching Twitter Blue.
The most appealing feature of Twitter’s subscription – which was later on replicated by Meta Platforms (META) – was the fact that users could get the long-sought “Verified” blue badge that was previously reserved for the elite.
However, Snap’s subscription cost is way lower than that of Twitter or Meta and that is perhaps the reason why millions have joined the program. In the case of the micro-blogging platform now owned by Elon Musk, reports indicate that under 300,000 users have subscribed to Twitter Blue.
Snap is also focused on developing its augmented reality (AR) experiences as the company believes that there is a huge opportunity for advertisers to be able to use this technology to showcase their products to customers in a way that they can interact with them as if they were in a physical store but from the comfort of their smartphones.
“To fully realize our AR advertising opportunity, we are now identifying ways to grow the ecosystem – partnering with media agencies like WPP, Publicis, and Denstu to find new, scaleable ways to integrate AR into brands’ go-to-market strategies”, commented Snap’s Chief Operating Officer, Jerry Hunter, during the firm’s latest Investor Day event.
Other Related Articles:
- Best Tech Stocks to Buy in February 2023
- Meta Platforms Joins Twitter in Democratizing Verified Blue Badges
- The Best Snapchat Spy Apps in 2023
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alejandro Arrieche.
Learn how to publish your content on B2C
Join our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage
Add B2C to your Google News Feed
Discuss This Article
Add a New Comment /Reply
Thanks for adding to the conversation!
Our comments are moderated. Your comment may not appear immediately.