Snapchat+ Boasts Impressive Numbers of Paying Subscribers

While ad revenue still makes up the huge majority of Snapchat revenue – it is showing impressive growth in the realms of subscribers to its premium service. Snapchat last week announced that it now had over five million of its users subscribed to the extra features that Snapchat+ brings to the social network platform. 

Five million paying users of the premium service is a dream number for many companies but does only represent a fraction of the 750 million people who use Snapchat every month. Nevertheless, growth of sign-ups to the premium service is impressive, considering it only launched last June. 

Snapchat+ gives users access to new features and a host of benefits earlier and sometimes exclusively than to non-signed up users of the platform. At $4 it’s an enticing price point that has successfully secured members. For example, Snapchat+ members gained early access to the My AI chatbot and an AI selfie feature that created dream-like posts and content in the drop of a hat. Users also gain access to custom themes, pinning functionality, and greater insights into viewers of their content. 

Tech Radar report that competitor X, formerly known as Twitter has had less success signing up it’s users to similar subscription service on the platform, with only one million subs. Many users would like the subscription model of snapchat to remove the ads, but alas that is not offered at the moment. As indicated, ads are still the primary source of revenue for the company. It will be interesting to see what lessons and tricks new and competing social media platforms and social discovery apps in particular, take from the trials and tribulations of subscriber models for such apps. A freemium model is a very common choice, but these numbers show that even for the most popular apps, high percentage of sign-ups can be difficult to secure.