• by Whitney Fishman Zember , February 2, 2022

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram is testing subscriptions with a limited number of U.S.-based creators. It’s not a new concept; in the last few years, Facebook launched subscriptions for Pages on its app, Twitter launched super follows, YouTube launched channel memberships, and subscription platforms like Patreon  and OnlyFans have emerged across the media universe.

Besides offering platforms a steady revenue stream beyond advertising, subscriptions are theoretically lucrative hooks to keep content creators on a platform by providing creators new ways to cash in. Otherwise, if they're not getting anything out of it, why should creators drive their audience to your platform and enable you to leverage their content?

As Instagram chief Adam Mosseri reiterated, “creators do what they do to make a living, and it’s important that that is predictable. Subscriptions are one of the best ways to have a predictable income—a way that’s not attached to how much reach you get on any given post, which is inevitably going to go up and down over time.”

Meta is really doubling down on supporting (or, at least, retaining) creators beyond its $1 billion Creator Fund. Creators can choose their own rates for access to their exclusive content, with eight price points to choose from, and Meta Platforms claims it won't collect any subscription revenue fees from creators until 2023.

We will no doubt see a comparable subscription offering from TikTok at some point this year in response. In fact, within 24 hours after the Instagram announcement, TikTok noted it was also testing a subscription model, but couldn’t provide more specific details yet.

What this means for the future of social media -- particularly subscription-based social media -- will be something to watch to understand its nuances. The last 22 months have reiterated the human need for community -- both micro and macro -- and the connection that community can provide, be it online or in-person. The notion of subscriptions will continue to evolve, and we will most likely see this evolution play out in how brands and platforms build and facilitate a metaverse and the variety of experiences inevitably coming.

For consumers, subscriptions often solve for a way to avoid advertising (womp womp for advertisers). Depending on the platform, one could argue that the subscription content is higher quality and worth the financial (and time) investment.

The more time/money/brain space a consumer invests translates into more engagement. On the back end, as we move towards whatever cookieless world you think is coming (and whatever that means), embracing different signals and predictive modeling (ideally coupled with first-party data, when available) is more critical than ever.

What if this means brands could offer content subscriptions in whatever format consumers chose, giving brands a new revenue stream as well as a platform for brand- and relationship-building?

If you really want to stretch this line of reasoning, I recommend watching how the subscription market proliferates, as it could provide insight into how we ultimately will access (pay for, unlock, engage in, etc.) the various metaverses bound to emerge in the coming months/years.