• by Colin Kirkland , April 19, 2023

Snap Inc. has announced that its subscription option, Snapchat+, now has over 3 million users.

At its Snap Partner Summit event in Santa Monica, the company said it will begin inviting Verizon users to buy Snapchat+ subscriptions through the carrier's subscription store, +Play.

Snapchat+ originally launched in June 2022. By August, 1 million people were subscribed. By February, the company counted 2 million subscribers, reporting continuous growth.

With 375 million daily active users on the platform worldwide, 3 million Snapchat+ subscribers makes up less than 1% of the AR-forward social-messaging app's total users.

However, Snap's subscription option is outperforming other leading social giants' paid options like Twitter Blue, which only has a few hundred thousand global subscribers, and Meta's paid Facebook service, which is just getting started.

Snap's premium subscribers have been showered with myriad feature releases in the past few months. In February, Snap introduced My AI, a personalized chatbot tool that subscribers can ask questions with and receive AI-generated answers they can then share with friends in the app.

The My AI chatbot -- which the company says sees nearly 2 million chats per day -- will soon become available to all Snapchatters, although premium users will experience an exclusive feature in which the bot replies to them with an image based on the conversation they are having.

Another premium AI-offering includes text prompts for visual AI-generated profile backgrounds, which showcase various design styles that users can choose from.

In addition to AI, subscribers have received fun and helpful tools including custom notification sounds, story expiration controls, and a plan gifting option.

In February, the company announced that Snapchat+ reached an annual revenue run rate of over $100. Since its launch, Snap has also made $80 million through in-app purchases, according to research reported by digital analytics company Sensor Tower, with more than half of premium subscribers based in the U.S., 10% from the U.K., and 5% from Saudi Arabia, Australia and Canada.