Snapchat has announced new features and data at its Snap Partner Summit 2023, which took place yesterday. First, a big number: Snapchat says it has “750 million+ Monthly Active Users” across all of Snapchat’s various services. This number can be broken down in certain key sections of the platform: for instance, Stories and Spotlight has 350 million MAUs, the company says. Daily Active User numbers were also up from 332m last year to 375m DAUs now.
One notable stat was the announcement that there are now 3 million subscribers of Snapchat+, its $3.99-a-month subscription service. That’s quite a hike from the 1 million subscribers in August 2022, and that number is likely to increase, as Snap will soon partner with the US-based Verizon mobile network, so that their customers can subscribe as a part of Verizon’s +play platform.
There were a number of music-focused announcements too, mostly connected to enhancing live performances: allowing fans to see AR visuals through the Snapchat camera that interact with the on-stage visual production. Snapchat’s partnership with Live Nation has expanded to bring custom Snapchat AR experiences to 16 festivals around the world; and it announced a new integration with live event visualisation company Disguise to further roll out Snap AR to more venues and tours. AI is of course playing a major role: the platform’s “My AI” function is rolling out to users around the world (it was previously only available as an experimental feature to Snapchat+ subscribers), and includes some new features, like adding the AI to group chats. Snapchat is also broadening its Stories revenue share program so that more creators can join. This program places ads within approved creators’ Stories and creates revenue for them from those ads. (Counterpoint: this week, writing in The Verge, one ex-employee of Snapchat bemoaned the introduction of ads (and on other social platforms) as the point when “users get put in the back seat.”)
Snap’s market cap has crept up from $13.9bn at the start of this year to $17.4bn yesterday; but in common with many tech stocks, it’s a long way below its all-time-high of $131.4bn in the late summer of 2021. As ever, Snapchat seems to be on the front foot when it comes to trying out new ideas, and testing new creative features to keep its user base happy and engaged (as well as what was mentioned here, there was various AR, generative AI, and Bitmoji announcements). That emphasis on creativity, and the increasing availability of more music for creators, is what will spark the interest of artists and their teams (as we noted in our Sandbox Guide to Snapchat a year or so ago.) Every platform is now a short video platform, it sometimes feels, so the drive for differentiation by Snapchat makes sense – and might tempt creative musical users over too.
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