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The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, went to Twitter and announced a new feature for the app. This time – subscriptions.
This is part of the plan of Instagram’s “building for teens and creators”, that Mosseri announced at the beginning of the year. Subscriptions are of course targeted for creators, in the hope it will bring them a “predictable income”.
Currently, the feature is in its test phase, meaning it is only available for a few creators and three major integrations in the US.
“Subscriptions are one of the best ways to have a predictable income – a way that is not attached to how much reach you get on any given post, which is inevitably going to go up and down over time,” – said Mosseri.
🎉 Subscriptions 🎉 Subscriptions allow creators to monetize and become closer to their followers through exclusive experiences: – Subscriber Lives – Subscriber Stories – Subscriber Badges We hope to add more creators to this test in the coming months. More to come. ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/SbFhN2QWMX — Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) January 19, 2022
The subscription feature currently offers Subscriber Stories, Subscriber Lives and Subscriber Badges.
Subscriber Stories
Allows the creators to share a particular story just to their subscribers who will get exclusive access. They’ll be marked with a purple ring to let subscribers know the story has limited access and can only be seen by them.
Subscriber Live
A creator can go live just to their subscribers – just like with the stories.
Subscriber Badge
Every subscriber will get a purple indicator (a crown) so that creators can identify them in comments, DMs and anywhere else on Instagram.
Mosseri says he hopes to expand these features over time “because it’s important that the subscriptions are integrated throughout the entire Instagram experience”.
Instagram also thinks creators should “own” their subscribers and want them to be able to take their subscriber list and bring them off of Instagram to other apps or websites that don’t necessarily have to be built by Facebook. To achieve that, Instagram is trying to figure out a way for creators to do so.
Why Is This Happening?
It is safe to assume that Instagram is trying to offer more monetization possibilities for creators to prevent them from leaving to Youtube and TikTok. Instagram is giving them the option to develop a deeper connection with their most engaged followers, but also bring them a recurring monthly income.
The parent company, Meta, says it won’t be taking any cut of the fees from subscriptions till at least 2023. Google and Apple, however, will deduct 30% of all in-app purchases in fees.
Update from the future: Instagram added four new features in July and expanded the eligibility to thousands of creators in the US. Read more about it here.
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