Snapchat is a pretty interesting social network. Basically you communicate with others via pictures and videos (although they have added traditional text in a recent update). They also added some pretty cool filters in a recent update, to take your selfie game up a notch. Everyone’s favorite appears to be the rainbow puke filter, which I have to say does look pretty cool. These lenses or filters, are now available for you to use forever. There are 30 of them, and they will cost you $0.99 each, because, well Snapchat needs to monetize its platform as well. The company will still be offering some free lenses each day as well. So they aren’t going from completely free to just paid lenses here.
The free lenses won’t be around forever, they will be a limited time thing. However the ones you pay for, will be around forever. So if you really like the rainbow puke, you can pay $0.99 and have it forever. Snapchat says that the lenses will be available in the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and some other European countries. There will be more rolling out in the near future as well. The company says that the update is rolling out beginning today.
To access these lenses, just long-press your face while in Selfie-mode, and you’ll see the free lenses. The free lenses will be listed at the top, followed by your lenses you’ve bought and at the bottom are others you can buy and use. Snapchat says that lenses have become very popular for the platform with them being used over 10 million times in just the first few months of them being around.
Snapchat is valued at $16 billion, and is looking to bring in $50 million in revenue for the year. With the addition of replays and now lenses, that should be an easy feat to accomplish. Especially with the platform having over 100 million daily users. Snapchat has been using a rather gentle approach to in-app purchases, and that will probably benefit them in the long run when it comes to bringing in some decent revenue in the near future.