Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel attends a session during the Viva Technology show 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 is debuting Snapchat for the web, allowing users to send messages and make video calls to their contacts from their computers.
It’s a remarkable development for a company that grew up targeting young consumers with a viral photo-sharing service for their phones while offering little more than a landing page for its website. By moving to desktops, 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, in addition to 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 their app 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 as opposed to its Stories feature.
Like the main Snap app, messages will disappear after 24 hours, and any Snaps users view from their desktop 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 using lenses. People will currently be able to access Snapchat for 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 set to report second-quarter earnings on Thursday after a rough first half of the year for the company. Snap shares fell 43% in May, a day after the company said it would miss its guidance, and are down more than 70% this year.
Analysts will be particularly focused on Snap’s results, as the company is the first of the major ad-supported app makers to report earnings during the period. Many advertisers have gone haywire in their spending as inflation has entered 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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