If the social apps want to know the secret to how they can make more and more people interested in their add-on subscription offerings, Snapchat is the one leading the way.

Last week, in the Q2 performance update of Snap, the company reported that its Snapchat+ subscription package has already picked up to 11 million paying subscribers.
That makes it the most successful of the recent wave of social subscription offerings, which, on Facebook and X at least, have put more focus on verification as a perk, effectively diluting the value of the very product that they're trying to sell.

Which seems like a backwards step.

So how has Snap seen success with its offering? Through audience understanding and providing add-on features that users actually want .

According to Snap:

"Back in 2022, we launched Snapchat+ with just six experiences. Today, subscribers get more than 40 exclusive features, including Chat Wallpapers, Custom App Icons, and AI Bitmoji Pets. Our Snapchat+ community has also been the first to try some of our favorite features, including Snapchat for Web and My AI, now available for Snapchatters worldwide."

To begin with, Snapchat has always been more connected with its user community, which is also why it's seen great success with its AR features. Because it knows what its users want, and Snapchat+ is another indicator of that connectedness and being in-tune with its community.

So exactly how successful is Snapchat+ as a subscription offering?

Well, based on reported numbers, this is where each subscription offering currently stands:
Worth noting, however, that these are estimates calculated from numbers the respective companies have published; only YouTube and Snapchat have confirmed subscription numbers.

As you can see, based on the data in hand, Snapchat has seen a far higher percentage of take-up for Snapchat+ than Meta and X have seen with their subscription offerings. The longer-standing add-on packages, in LinkedIn Premium and YouTube Premium, are still more popular, but they've also been in the market for many more years and offer alternate value, in improving job prospects or removing ads from video playback.

So, in this respect, LinkedIn Premium and YouTube Premium, for instance, are quite not comparable, and despite that, Snapchat has been one of the more successful ones of its kind in the new wave of subscriptions and contributes yet another stable source of revenue to the company.

And so, what does Meta and X take from Snapchat+?

Well, selling verification seems to be a road to nowhere still, and just because some people will pay for a checkmark, that does not, at least in my view, mean you should sell them.
But if there is a possibility of easy money, it is also well-suited for them to take it, but genuinely speaking, what Snapchat has shown is that the users are willing to pay for add-ons that are in tune with a better user experience rather than pretending to hold some sort of power or high status in the application.

That is, I believe, the real battlefield, and Snapchat, in that regard, is winning.

Great seeing just how much Snapchat+ might catch up on within the next few months.