Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel attends a session during the Viva Technology Show in Paris on June 17, 2022.
Eric Pyrmont | AFP | Getty Images
After more than a decade as a mobile-only service, Snapchat is coming to your desktop.
Explode, ExplodeOn Monday, the father of the popular photo and messaging app said it will launch Snapchat for the web for the first time, allowing users to send messages and make video calls to their contacts from their computers.
It’s a noteworthy development for a company that grew up targeting young users with a viral photo sharing service for their phones while only offering a landing page for its website. By moving to desktops, Snap may be acknowledging that its users have grown up, and many of them are now working on big screens at home or in the office.
The new desktop version of Snapchat will initially be available only to Australian and New Zealand users, as well as Snapchat+ subscribers in the US, UK and Canada. Snap has been launched Snapchat + In June, allowing users to pay $3.99 a month for more advanced features, such as changing the style of their app icon and seeing who viewed their content.
The webview will be a more abstract version of the mobile app, focusing primarily on the app’s messaging feature rather than the Stories feature.
Like the main Snap app, messages will disappear after 24 hours, and any users who view it will delete it from their desktop immediately after viewing.
Ultimately, Snap says it will bring more features of the app to the desktop version, including the ability for users to activate their video calls with Lenses. For now, people will have to access Snapchat for the web via the Chrome browser, but the company said it will soon support other browsers and could launch a desktop app in the future.
Snap is due to report second-quarter earnings Thursday after a difficult first half of the year for the company. pick up stocks drilling 43% In May, the day after the company announced it would lose its guidance, it is down more than 70% this year.
Analysts will focus in particular on Snap’s results, as the company is the first among the major ad-supported app makers to report earnings for the period. Many advertisers have struggled with their spending due to inflation running through the economy.
“Since we issued the guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated more and faster than expected,” Snape said in May.
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