Making Tech Headlines · Page 6
Snapchat Finds 30 Million Subscribers and a Monthly Price for Remembering
· New York time
Snapchat has passed 30 million paid subscribers, a milestone reached a year after the company announced a controversial limit on free storage for its Memories feature. Users were told they would need to pay $1.99 per month for additional storage or subscribe to Snapchat+ to retain their Memories. The storage change made a personal archive part of a business decision. Photos and videos saved over time can be valuable to their owners even when no single image looks like a premium product. A recurring fee offers a way to keep that archive within the service, while the limit makes storage capacity more visible than it was when users simply saved things. The subscriber milestone is for Snapchat's paid offerings overall. It does not establish how many people subscribed specifically because of the Memories change. The timing nevertheless puts the company's growth next to a policy that turned an emotional feature into a more explicit commercial proposition. Cloud storage costs money, and a paid tier is one way to fund it. The comic achievement is how neatly a company's pricing page can transform nostalgia into a monthly line item. Remember the birthday, remember the vacation, and remember which card is connected to the account.
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