Up next on Snapchat Plus: Longer-lasting Stories

Snapchat+ has been a major boon for a company that needed a win in 2022. Four months after the premium tier launched, Snap is sprucing it up with some new features. Most notably, Plus customers will now be able to adjust how long their Stories are visible.

Previously, Stories were available for 24 hours after they were first uploaded, but as of October 20, that has changed. An image shared by Snap shows a wide variety of options for Story times. If you’re willing to pay $3.99 per month for a Snapchat+ subscription, you can post Stories that last for as short as one hour or as long as one week.

That affordable price has been a big part of the Snapchat+ success story. In August, less than two months after the tier launched, Snap said that it already had one million paying customers.

The other new features coming to Snapchat+ are mainly cosmetic in nature. Subscribers can change the color of the border that appears around the app’s camera while taking photos. The array of prismatic options ranges from Snapchat Yellow to Shocking Pink. And if you want to know exactly who is sending you a Snap, you can set custom notification noises for individual friends — so long as you pay up for Plus.

The ability to customize individual relationships on Snapchat has been a recurring theme for Plus. Since its launch, the premium tier has allowed users to designate one of their friends as their “#1 BFF.” The app has also promised to give its Subscribers first access to new features.

A gift is coming to Snapchat+

Snap’s premium tier resembles similar offerings on other platforms, such as Twitter Blue. Before the end of the year, however, Snap is looking to emulate a different class of subscriptions.

Starting in December, Snapchat+ customers will be able to gift subscriptions to their friends, according to TechCrunch. That update will carry on the “friends 4eva” vibe of the tier, and it will also bring Snapchat+ closer to Subscriptions and Memberships, which allow users to gift premium access to Twitch and YouTube, respectively.

Gifted subscriptions are typically associated with live streams, which is not Snapchat’s forté. There is evidence, however, that the app owned by Snap, Inc. wants to encourage longer content. For example, it’s starting to bring mid-roll ads to its Stories. The longer a Story runs for, the more ads can be included in it. And since Stories can now be active for up to a week, Snap will be able to increase the number of eyeballs that see its impending ads.