Facebook Owner Meta Will Provide Paid Subscription Services
Facebook Owner Meta Will Provide Paid Subscription Services
February 21, 2023 / By Zunair Tahir / Tech News
CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Sunday that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, will establish a premium membership service with a starting price of $11.99 per month that will allow users to verify their accounts. Elon Musk had already made a similar step at Twitter.
Users will be able to verify a “account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get enhanced impersonation protection against accounts pretending to be you, and get direct access to customer support,” according to Zuckerberg. Meta Verified will launch this week, starting in Australia and New Zealand.
In a message uploaded on his Facebook account, he said, “This new feature is about boosting authenticity and security across our services.”
The business added that verified Facebook and Instagram profiles will remain the same and that only people who are at least 18 years old would be permitted to subscribe. Businesses are not yet able to use the service.
In nations where users cannot afford to pay $12 a month or in cash-based economies where they may have fewer options for sending the money to Meta, Zuckerberg’s pricing plans for Meta Verified were not immediately evident.
Musk’s first attempts to provide a comparable service at rival social media network Twitter last year failed horribly, scaring away advertisers and raising serious concerns about the site’s sustainability.
He was had to temporarily halt the initiative before resuming it in December to lukewarm response.
Facebook played a key role in establishing the dominant business model of the internet’s largest platforms, which rewards users with “free” services that gather and sell their personal data to advertisers.
After the California-based company’s IPO in 2012, Meta experienced a drop in ad income in 2022.
Facebook’s daily users just surpassed two billion, according to the company, but due to inflation cutting into advertisers’ budgets and tough competition from applications like TikTok, those users aren’t generating as much cash as they once did.
The corporation has also been harmed by legislative changes brought about by iPhone manufacturer Apple, which limit social networks’ capacity to collect data and monetize advertising.
Similar reasons have previously prompted the development of premium subscriptions on other networks, including Reddit, Snapchat, and of course, Twitter.
Meanwhile, Meta is under criticism for taking a big chance on the metaverse, a virtual reality environment that Zuckerberg thinks will be the online space’s next frontier.
Investors penalized Meta last year, pushing the stock down an astounding two thirds in only one year, but in 2023, the price has somewhat recovered.
The biggest employment decrease in business history, 11,000 layoffs at Meta, or 13% of the workforce, were announced in November.
