Snapchat logo. (Photo: Lionel Bonaventure / AFP). (Photo by Lionel Bonaventure / AFP Getty) A [+]
Twitter Blue has been in business for over a year and with the launch of SnapChat +, we are in the age of paid social media. Meta can’t delay too long to offer Facebook + and Facebook VIP experience.
Snapchat Plus doesn’t really offer that much. It will cost $ 4 / month in the United States, Canada, a few European countries, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The proposed features are not very impressive.
- Exclusive, experimental features that are not yet available (will be released in the future).
- Change the icon in your app
- See who saw your story
- Pin top chat buddy
- And it’s about …
It’s like a simple snap announcement, I guess. Snapchat + could be an incredible bargain, or it could be a waste of money depending on the results of the pre-release feature test. Snapchat cannot block ads.
Twitter Blue has been around a bit long, so you’ll expect a few more features. And it certainly provides the ad-free status you can expect from a paid product. Here Twitter currently offers for $ 3 / month:
- There are no ads
- Bookmark
- Custom app icons
- Theme
- Custom on navigation
- Best article
- Reader
- Undo the tweet
It’s a bit more extensive list, but it’s not something that blows you away every voluntarily. Without any ads for payment accounts, this is a very simple list of customizations and personalizations that you can expect to offer any mature product.
The question is: if offering a “plus” product for an extra charge is literally so easy, then why isn’t Facebook / Meta jumping on the bandwagon? That’s why Reddit didn’t look at other social apps like Pinterest or TikTok.
It is probably they. And they’ve been thinking about it for a while.
“A version of Facebook will always be free,” Zuckerberg said during a U.S. Senate Judiciary and Commerce hearing four years ago.
This does not preclude, however, that the company offers a version that costs and offers additional features, an extended version for the general public or an admin version with additional powers for leaders of companies or large groups or pages.
With the ongoing economic downturn, any source of income that looks secure and regular – like subscription income – looks good on platforms. Which means we’ll see more “plus” versions in the next 12 months.
However, the question is whether people will have enough premium functionality in their paid versions to make them attractive enough to be accepted by a large number of users. Looks like Snapchat +, Twitter Blue and Twitter Blue Vanity versions. They are only for those who can afford them.
These certainly don’t seem to be the things that make a particular person’s life better or easier.
