Snapchat Plus, a paid subscription service, is being developed by Snap

Apparently giving users early access to features as well as other abilities, Snapchat Plus is a premium membership that Snap is testing privately. Snap representative Liz Markman provided The Verge with the following statement:

We’re doing early internal testing of Snapchat Plus, a new subscription service for Snapchatters. We’re excited about the potential to share exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features with our subscribers, and learn more about how we can best serve our community.

Snap is reportedly testing additional features for Snapchat Plus, including the ability to designate one of your friends as your "#1 BFF" (which sounds like a recipe for drama — MySpace made it to the top 8 for a reason), start changing the Snapchat icon, and see who rewatches your stories, according to screenshots and information tweeted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi. Paluzzi also shows that the current listed prices for Snapchat Plus are 4.59 Euros per month and 45.99 Euros per year (equivalent to $4.84 and 48.50, respectively). Of course, those may only be placeholder prices at this time.

Snap may not be the only social network or messaging service developing a paid tier; Twitter launched its Blue service late last year, and Telegram has acknowledged that it is developing a premium membership as well.

Many free apps have had to review their revenue models in the wake of Apple's release of a privacy feature for adverts with iOS 14.5, allowing users to turn off ad tracking on an app-by-app basis. Particularly Snapchat has indicated that it will slow down hiring this year and cited iOS updates as the cause of missed revenue targets.

Source: The Verge