The company formerly known as Facebook, Meta, has plans afoot to create paid-for features for its most popular platforms. Those platforms, in case you’re not aware, are Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
This information comes via Meta’s vice president of monetisation (they have one of those), John Hegeman. Speaking in an interview with The Verge, Hegeman confirmed that the company is exploring new ways to charge its user base for access to some features.
Changing the Meta
Hegeman’s interview followed The Verge receiving an internal memo discussing the establishment of a group within Meta to investigate “possible paid features”.
“I think we do see opportunities to build new types of products, features, and experiences that people would be willing to pay for and be excited to pay for,” said Hegeman. He did not elaborate on what sort of features the company reckons its users might be willing to pay for. It doesn’t appear that anything that’s already free will be charged for, but you never know.
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Meta, of late, has encountered some tough times. Facebook experienced its first-ever decline at the beginning of this year. Mark Zuckerberg’s push into the metaverse has cost the company at least $10 billion. The company’s ad business, Meta’s main revenue driver, took a serious knock when Apple introduced a new ad transparency system in 2021.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Zuckerberg’s company is looking at new ways to bring in cash. It continues to clone competitors furiously. Adding NFT support to Facebook and Instagram has the added benefit of integrating financial data into the company’s user profiles. Some paid-for content has already shown up, but it’s mostly passive income for Meta. Or, rather, it will be. The company has promised not to take a cut from creator revenue until 2024 — for a range of reasons.
Source: The Verge
