Snapchat, the popular messaging app, is looking to take on Facebook Messenger with its new Snapchat Plus feature. The new feature allows users to send photos and videos as well as text messages directly from the app. The move is likely in response to Facebook’s recent acquisition of WhatsApp, which has over 1 billion users. Facebook Messenger has over 900 million users and is growing rapidly. While Snapchat may not have the same reach as Facebook Messenger, it does have a large user base of its own. The app has been downloaded more than 150 million times and has a daily active user base of about 20 million people. ..
Snapchat announced today that it has released a web version of Snapchat, available at web.snapchat.com, which can be used to message and call friends from a desktop or laptop computer. It’s only officially compatible with Google Chrome right now, but it does support Chat Reactions and Chat Reply. Lenses, the augmented reality filters for videos and photos, are coming “soon.”
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Now that Snapchat is officially available outside of Android, iPhone, and iPad for the first time, it’s much closer to Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and other cross-platform messaging services. Given the platform’s 332 million daily users, there’s certainly a lot of people already using Snapchat, and desktop access makes talking on the platform much more convenient — no more reaching for your phone.
There is a catch: the web app is only accessible to people subscribed to Snapchat+ right now. The Snapchat+ subscription service was introduced last month and costs $3.99 per month, and includes other pre-release and experimental features. There’s a good chance the web client will eventually roll out to all Snapchat users — Snap said “we can’t wait to bring it to our entire global community soon” — but there’s no specific timeline for that yet.
Source: Snap
