Snapchat Lenses: How do they work and do they cost anything?

When users saw that they had to shell out 99 cents for the feature, they took to Twitter to complain.

Selling selfie lenses, of course, is a good way for Snapchat to make money outside of advertising, introducing an alternative revenue source that will make it a bit easier for the company to justify its multi-billion dollar valuation. So they aren’t going from completely free to just paid lenses here. You can take a photo or a video, and add a caption or doodle or Lens, then send it to a friend or add it to your story to publically share with the world/all your followers. Snapchat says that the lenses will be available in the U.S., UK, Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and a few other European countries. (Snapchat has about 100 million daily users.) I’ve been impressed with the filters as an engagement hack – I find myself coming back to the app day after the day just to see what weird filter Snapchat has cooked up.

While using the front-facing camera, long press on your face to turn on selfie lenses.

Snapchat’s latest update includes a new lens store, which will let you buy a variety of weird and wacky lenses for use in messages.

I quite like Snapchat’s rather gentle approach to in-app purchases: offering all of its core features for free, but letting you pay for extras here and there. We recently saw a Peanuts Snapchat Lens that delivered a free upgrade.

There are also new Snapchat emoji options that users can add to their selfies.

Snapchat: What’s the new Lens store?

Snapchat revealed that there will be 30 lenses that are available to purchase each day, including popular ones like the rainbow puke, as well as other new ones.

Now, with the new Lens store, Snapchat has begun monetising Lenses. Lenses range from rainbow vomit to scary monster faces.