In a bid to raise revenues, SnapInc will soon monetize Snapstreaks. This is a Snapchat feature that tracks how long you’ve been trading daily snaps with a friend, and are about to get a little more forgiving. In a short blog post, the company says it’s testing the option to let users restore broken streaks. “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,” it writes.
The keen-eyed may have spotted a key qualifier in Snap’s sentence, which is that the company is saying you’ll currently only be able to restore a single streak for free. After the first restore, TechCrunch reports that users will have to pay $0.99 per streak. And if you want to be able to freely pause streaks when you know you’re going to be busy or without an internet connection, then a “freeze” feature is coming to Snapchat Plus, the company’s $3.99 premium subscription launched last year. That feature is “coming soon,” Snap says.
Combined, it sounds like the new features are Snap’s attempt to monetize one of Snapchat’s most engaging features (and so following a trend in social media companies that includes Twitter’s subscription push and Meta’s latest paid verification). In 2019, Snapchat users we spoke to were so keen to keep streaks going they’d even emailed the company to try and restore them. And, at the time at least, Snap was sometimes happy to oblige.
News of Snap’s plans to charge users to restore streaks was reported ahead of its official announcement by Business Insider. The feature’s launch comes less than a year after the company laid off 20 percent of its workforce as it attempts to contend with a falling share price and broader economic uncertainty.
As of the end of January, Snap said over two million of its users were paying for Snapchat Plus, which includes features like pinning conversations with a chosen contact to the top of your inbox and unique app icons.
