SOCIAL
Snapchat Officially Launches its New ‘Snapchat+’ Subscription Program

Snapchat has officially launched its new Snapchat+ subscription service, which will enable users to pay a monthly fee in order to gain access to exclusive in-app features, including custom app icons, new profile badges, data insights, display tools and more.
As explained by Snap:
“Today we’re launching Snapchat+, a collection of exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features available in Snapchat for $3.99/month. This subscription will allow us to deliver new Snapchat features to some of the most passionate members of our community and allow us to provide prioritized support.”
And also, make more money, which is a key concern for Snap, which has been hit hard by recent economic shifts, particularly in Europe, leading to reduced ad spend in the app.
As we reported recently, based on initial leaks of the Snapchat+ offering, the new subscription program will include:
- Access to exclusive Snapchat icons
- A new profile badge to show that you’re a Snapchat+ user
- New data insights, including the capacity to see your friends’ location history (over the last 24 hours) and info on who’s rewatched your Story
- The capacity to pin a user in the app as ‘your #1 best friend’

None of those is hugely compelling – they’re not ‘game-changing’ type features that will see mass adoption. But they may appeal to a subset of the most passionate Snap users, and if Snap only signs up, say, 1% of its active user base, that would still equate to an additional $13.2 million in monthly income ($159m p.a.) for the app.
Though even that, based on the take-up of similar options in other apps, could be a stretch.
The program is very similar to Twitter’s ‘Twitter Blue’ add-on package, which enables Twitter users to pay $2.99 per month for access to similar tools.
But Twitter Blue take-up, thus far, has been slow. In its most recent performance update, Twitter reported that its revenue from subscriptions and other non-advertising sources totaled $94 million in Q4 21, which was actually a decrease of 31% for this element, year-over-year. That suggests Twitter Blue isn’t really gaining any traction at all, while Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has also said that Twitter has not hit ‘intermediate milestones that enable confidence’ with its new revenue and growth projects, like Twitter Blue.
Will Snapchat+ fare any better?
It’s obviously impossible to predict – and there is something to be said for the connection that Snapchat users feel to the app, which they use as a key connector with their closest friends.
That enhanced alignment could lead to more paying users – and again, Snap only needs a small percentage of people to take it up to make it a significantly profitable option.
And Snap has repeatedly shown that it understands its audience better than other apps.
It’ll take some time, but maybe, this could be a valuable addition for Snap, and its users.
Snapchat+ will initially be made available to users in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Snapchat says that it will look to further expand access over time.
SOCIAL
Musk regrets controversial post but won’t bow to advertiser ‘blackmail’

Elon Musk’s comments at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Slaven Vlasic
Elon Musk apologized Wednesday for endorsing a social media post widely seen as anti-Semitic, but accused advertisers who are turning away from his social media platform X of “blackmail” and said anyone who does so can “go fuck yourself.”
The remark before corporate executives at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence.
Earlier, Musk had apologized for what he called “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.”
In a comment on X, formerly Twitter, Musk on November 15 called a post “the actual truth” that said Jewish communities advocated a “dialectical hatred against whites,” which was criticized as echoing longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists.
The statement prompted a flood of departures from X of major advertisers, including Apple, Disney, Comcast and IBM who criticized Musk for anti-semitism.
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” Musk said Wednesday. “It was foolish of me.”
He told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin that his post had been misinterpreted and that he had sought to clarify the remark in subsequent posts to the thread.
But Musk also said he wouldn’t be beholden to pressure from advertisers.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money?” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself.”
But the billionaire acknowledged that there were business implications to the advertiser actions.
“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott” Musk said. “And that will be what will bankrupt the company.”
Musk, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel earlier this week, insisted in the interview that he holds no discrimination against Jews, calling himself “philo-Semitic,” or an admirer of Judaism.
During the interview, Musk wore a necklace given to him by a parent of an Israeli hostage taken in the Hamas attack on October 7. The necklace reads, “Bring Them Home.”
Musk told Sorkin that the Israel trip had been planned earlier and was not an “apology tour” related to the controversial tweet.
SOCIAL
TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

A new report by The Information shows the company’s recent efforts to convince
creators to put out longer videos in order to provide more room for ad placements.
According to the …
SOCIAL
X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:
Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.
And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:
Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.
But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.
Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.
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