Snapchat Wants to Be the Next Facebook Messenger

Snapchat started off as a simple app for sending temporary photos to others, but it has slowly evolved into a full-blown messaging service (and video platform). Today, Snapchat revealed a major new feature: a desktop web app.

Snapchat announced today that it has released a web version of Snapchat, available at web.snapchat.com, which can be used to message and call friends from a desktop or laptop computer. It’s only officially compatible with Google Chrome right now, but it does support Chat Reactions and Chat Reply. Lenses, the augmented reality filters for videos and photos, are coming “soon.”

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Now that Snapchat is officially available outside of Android, iPhone, and iPad for the first time, it’s much closer to Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and other cross-platform messaging services. Given the platform’s 332 million daily users, there’s certainly a lot of people already using Snapchat, and desktop access makes talking on the platform much more convenient — no more reaching for your phone.

There is a catch: the web app is only accessible to people subscribed to Snapchat+ right now. The Snapchat+ subscription service was introduced last month and costs $3.99 per month, and includes other pre-release and experimental features. There’s a good chance the web client will eventually roll out to all Snapchat users — Snap said “we can’t wait to bring it to our entire global community soon” — but there’s no specific timeline for that yet.

Source: Snap