Facebook and Instagram kicked off a week-long rollout of their first paid subscription service on Friday, testing users’ willingness to pay for features that were previously free on social media.
Faced with falling advertising revenue, parent company Meta is experimenting with subscription plans in Australia and New Zealand before rolling it out in larger markets. The service costs $11.99 per month for users who subscribe to it on the web and $14.99 for those using mobile applications.
Starting Friday, Australian subscribers who present government-issued identification can request a blue authenticity badge, which offers them protection from identity theft, direct access to customer service and greater visibility, the company said.
“We will gradually roll out access to Meta Verified on Facebook and Instagram and expect to reach 100 percent uptime within the first seven days of rollout,” a Meta spokesperson told AFP.
“This new feature is intended to strengthen the authenticity and security of our services,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, in a statement published on Facebook and Instagram.
Crucially, this move also gives Meta a way to draw more revenue from its two billion users.
The growing army of creators and influencers who make their living online could be the first customer base for its paid services, experts say.
Many of them complain about the difficulty in solving technical and administrative problems, causing delays and loss of income.
Jonathon Hutchinson, Lecturer in Online Communications at the University of Sydney, noted that some sort of “VIP service” could be “a very attractive proposition for a content creator”.
Meta often wanted to try new, sometimes risky, models only to abandon what didn’t work, Hutchinson noted.
“It’s part of a strategy to transition smoothly to a non-free model where more and more services and features are paid or subscription-based,” he told AFP.
But before launch, regular users didn’t seem too keen on donating money to a company that’s already making huge bucks from its data.