Mark Zuckerberg may have better luck with Elon Musk’s ‘blue tick’

Three months ago, Elon Musk announced an $US11 monthly subscription service to give Twitter users a blue verification check mark.

On Sunday, Meta Platforms announced largely the same thing: a $US15 subscription service for users to get a blue verified badge, so long as they provide a government-issued ID.

Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg is a shameless copycat. He cloned Snapchat’s Stories feature (even calling it “Facebook Stories”), launched a copy of TikTok called Reels and imitated the live video app Periscope with Facebook Live. The strategy works. Many of these clones, like Stories and Reels, take off successfully on Instagram.

This will likely be the case with Zuckerberg’s new subscription service, even though at first glance it looks incredibly off-putting. Who’d want to pay to give Facebook their ID? The thing is, this isn’t really aimed at regular users of Facebook and Instagram. It’s aimed at creators, particularly on Instagram, and the real selling point is reach.

Creators typically make money by partnering with brands and posting sponsored content. A fitness influencer might use a post to sing the praises of a specialised foam roller, for instance. But these creators live and die by how many people “like” their posts, a metric that usually corresponds with views; so the more likes they get, the more money they can demand for sponsored content. And Meta’s new subscription service offers “increased visibility and reach” in search and recommendations. The company has positioned this as being about verification, but it’s really about giving certain posts more of a chance to go viral.

Loading

Twitter’s subscription service has floundered, and only about 0.2 per cent of Twitter’s US users had paid for subscriptions like Twitter Blue as of January 2023, according to The Information. But the strategy has a much better chance of succeeding on Instagram thanks to the promise of reach. Many influencers will decide that paying $US15 a month to help their content stand out will be worth it.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh estimates the new service could add $US2 billion to $US3 billion to Meta’s annual sales, which is a fraction of Meta’s $117 billion in revenue last year but probably more than what the company is making from the metaverse. Singh said in a note that the service would also help keep creators from moving over to TikTok.

Indeed, its more important impact will be in keeping the most interesting creators on Meta’s platforms and thus ensuring millions more users watch Reels instead of TikTok. The subscription service is rolling out in Australia and New Zealand first, but as it comes to Europe and the US, creators will be testing how far $US15 really takes them in terms of audience.