Snapchat has announced a new offering which will enable users to restore their Snap streaks, which could actually be a very popular option, considering the social value of streaks among Snap’s user base.
As per Snapchat:
“Since 2016, Snapchatters have celebrated the friendships they nurture daily with Snap Streaks with pals near and far. But, life gets busy, camping trips and exams come up, and bad service or phones-down time means that sometimes you just need a day to pause. 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.”
As you can see in these screenshots, users will soon be shown a pop-up option to restore a streak, with a ‘Restore’ symbol also displayed in your chat inbox.
And as Snap notes, you’ll be able to restore a chat for free, one time. But beyond that, it’ll cost you.
Once you use up your free restore, you’ll have the option to buy additional restores, for 99 cents each time, which will provide another way for Snap to add incremental revenue.
But an even better revenue option for Snap is this:
“Coming soon, we’ll also be adding a new way for Snapchat+ subscribers to freeze their Streaks, putting things on pause when they know they’re going off the grid.”
Yes, even more incentive to sign-up for Snapchat+, which also now comes with Snap’s ‘My AI’ conversational chatbot option, and already has over 2.5 million paying subscribers.
Which is a smart move, because many Snapchat users are very invested in their Snap Streaks.
As per Where I Can Be Me:
“To some, slacking off on a Snapstreak is seen as a major offense. A broken streak can be disappointing. In extreme cases, it can cause drama, and lead to rifts in the friendship. When your favorite app is essentially keeping score of your friendships, it’s easy to get caught up. This is a problem for a number of reasons.”
Its stands to reason, then, that many users will, at the least, consider paying to keep their streaks alive, which could have big benefits for the app.
Snapchat+ is quickly rounding out into a more valuable and viable revenue stream for the app, and has already succeeded well beyond any other paid subscription option offered by other social platforms.
The benefit that Snapchat has in this regard is that its users are very aligned with the app. Snap users have a stronger connection to the platform, due to the way in which it connects them with friends, which has enhanced Snap’s capacity to drive subscription sign-ups. New, exclusive additions like My AI and the capacity to pause streaks will continue to enhance the offering, beyond basic add-ons and filler features.
Other platforms would do well to take note of Snap’s successes on this front, and consider how they can better enhance their own paid offerings with more robust exclusive elements. Twitter is reportedly already looking to develop a ChatGPT-like conversational AI tool, and it would seemingly do well for it to add such to Twitter Blue, or consider other, more beneficial tools to sweeten the deal.
Either way, Snapchat’s continued development of Snapchat+ is an interesting case study, and the capacity to pause and re-ignite streaks could actually be a valuable addition for the app.
