As ad revenue continues to decline social networks move towards alternate revenue streams.
Meta the parent company of facebook is the latest to announce that they would being to allow users to purchase a subscription for the verified checkmarks. This follows Twitter’s recent move of charging users for the same.
Advertising Revenue is a Dwindling
With the ever growing user privacy enhancements, ad revenue is continuing to decline at the major social media giants. A significant win for consumers was the changes that have been made to iOS devices that gave them the option of limiting what information is shared with advertisers. This was one step in the right direction and met with quite a bit of outspoken outrage from the social media giants. There are ongoing user privacy rights fights going on worldwide and the trend is to continue to further protect user data.
Shifting Costs For Verification to Users
Another byproduct of this change is users are unknowingly paying for the platform’s verification efforts. The platforms have had ongoing challenges with verifying users on their platforms and ensuring bot networks don’t take over, skewing their user numbers and eating their resources. Forcing creators to pay for verification quickly helps filter out bot spam and gives the users on the platform a quick indications of verified content.
Is this good for users?
In conclusion, I do think this is a good thing for users. While a few years ago it would seem like a preposterous idea for users to pay for social media — it doesn’t seem far off where many users will be paying regularly for access.
The questions we have is will this kill social media completely, will a free alternative arise, or is the era of ad-based social platforms done. If you have an idea for a social application or paid service feel free to jump over to our contact page and let us know how we can help.
