Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel attends a session during Viva Technology in Paris on June 17, 2022.
Eric Piermont | AFP | Getty Images
After more than a decade as a mobile-only service, Snapchat is coming to your desktop.
Snap, the parent of the popular photo and messaging app, said Monday it will debut Snapchat for the Web, which lets users send messages and make video calls to their contacts from their computers.
It’s a noteworthy development for a company that grew up targeting younger users with a viral photo-sharing service for their phones while offering little more than a landing page for its website. By moving to desktop computers, Snap may be acknowledging that its users have grown up, and many of them now work on large screens at home or in the office.
The new desktop version of Snapchat will initially only be available to users in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Snapchat+ subscribers in the US, UK and Canada. Snap launched Snapchat+ in June, allowing users to pay $3.99 a month for more advanced features, such as changing the style of the app’s icon and seeing who viewed their content.
The web offering will be a stripped-down version of the mobile app, focusing primarily on the app’s messaging feature rather than the Stories feature.
As with the main Snap app, posts will disappear after 24 hours, and any Snaps users view from their computers will be deleted immediately after viewing.
Eventually, Snap says it will bring more app features to the desktop version, including the ability for users to liven up their video calls with Lenses. People currently have to access Snapchat for the web through the Chrome browser, but the company said it will soon support other browsers and may release a desktop app in the future.
Snap is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on Thursday after a difficult first half for the company. Snap shares fell 43% in May, a day after the company said it would miss guidance, and have fallen more than 70% this year.
Analysts will be particularly focused on Snap’s results because the company is the first major ad-supported app maker to report revenue for the period. Many advertisers cut their spending as inflation swept the economy.
“Since we issued guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than expected,” Snap said in May.
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