Australia and New Zealand are experimenting with a paid subscription to Facebook and Instagram

Faced with declining advertising revenue, Meta is piloting a paid subscription to social networks Facebook and Instagram in Australia and New Zealand.

The first paid subscription service should roll out from Friday, February 24, for a week, before it’s introduced to larger markets. It will cost $11.99 (€11.30) per month for users who subscribe to it online and $14.99 for those using the mobile apps.

Abonnés australians qui fournissent une pièce d’identité officielle peuvent demander un badge bleu, gage d’authenticité, qui leur offrira une protection contre tout risque d’usurpation de leur identité, un accès direct au service client et devantage de visibilite, selon la association.

We will gradually roll out access to Meta Verified to Facebook and Instagram and expect to achieve 100% availability within the first seven days of rollout.A Meta spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP). This new feature aims to enhance the authenticity and security of our services.Meta Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a statement posted to Facebook and Instagram.

Influencers are the main customers

Crucially, the move also provides Meta with a way to derive more revenue from its 2 billion users. Experts say the growing army of creators and influencers who make a living online may be the number one customer base for its paid services. Many of them complain about the difficulty of solving technical and administrative problems, which leads to delays and loss of income.

Jonathan Hutchinson, Lecturer in Internet Communication at the University of Sydney, kind of pointed this out VIP service Maybe “A very interesting proposal for a content creator”.

Meta often wanted to test new models, sometimes risky ones, only to give away what didn’t work, Hutchinson noted. “This is part of a strategy to seamlessly transition to a non-free model, where more and more services and features are paid or subscription-based.”He also told Agence France-Presse.

But prior to launch, regular users weren’t too keen on donating money to a company that was already making huge amounts of their data.