The Snapchats your friends send you no longer have to disappear, but it’ll cost you.
Snapchat rolled out a free feature called Replay a few years ago that allows people to re-watch one snap per day (normally, once you watch a snap it’s gone for good). The feature was apparently a popular one. The company announced Tuesday that it will now be selling replays. You can buy three of them for 99 cents.
“They’re a little pricey — but time is money! ;),” the company wrote on its blog.
It’s a noteworthy move for Snapchat for a few reasons. The company is just getting started when it comes to generating revenue — so far it has been relying almost exclusively on advertising. This seems like it might be a small revenue stream — it’s unclear how many users are willing to pay in order to see messages more than once — but it is a revenue stream nonetheless and a sign that Snapchat is still very much exploring its options when it comes to making money.
It’s also a signal that Snapchat is not-so-slowly expanding on the disappearing messages perk that put the company on the map in the first place. In the company’s early days, it was tough to understand how Snapchat could ever monetize content that disappeared. Now it’s becoming clear its business is growing thanks to content that’s sticking around. Snapchat’s core money-making products — Discover and Snapchat Live Stories — both rely on content that exists for 24 hours. So it looks as though content pays, but only if that content stays visible long enough to generate some cash.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
