Paying for social media

Twitter has implemented a monthly charge for its "Twitter Blue" service. Facebook (or Meta) has announced something similar.

Apple introduced its "Tracking Transparency" initiative (which allows users to disable tracking by apps) and that changed the market. Advertisers are apparently paying less to Facebook (and possibly Twitter) because of this change.

It was perhaps inevitable that Twitter and Facebook would look to replace that lost revenue. And where to look? To the users, of course! Thus the subscription fees were invented.

Twitter's fee is $8 per month, and Meta's is $12 per month. (Both are higher when purchased on an Apple device.)

Meta's price seems high. I suspect that Meta will introduce a second tier, with fewer features, and with a lower monthly rate.

Facebook and Meta must be careful. They may think that they are competing with streaming services and newspaper subscriptions. Streaming services have different pricing, from ad-supported services that charge nothing to Netflix and HBOmax that charge $15 per month (or thereabouts).

But newspapers and streaming services are different from social media. Netflix, HBOmax, and the other streaming services create content (or buy the rights to content) and provide it to viewers. Newspapers create content (or buy the rights) and present it to readers. For both, the flow of information is one-way: from the service to the user.

Social media operates differently. Users create the content, with posts and updates. That information is of interest to family, friends, and colleagues. The value to users is not merely in content, but in the network of connections. A social media site with lots of your friends is interesting to you; a site with only a few is less interesting, and a site with no friends is of no interest.

Meta and Twitter face a different challenge than Netflix and HBOmax. If streaming services raise prices or do other things to drive away customers, the value for the remaining customers remains the same. But if Facebook or Twitter drive away users, then they are reducing the value of the service to the remaining users. Meta and Twitter (and any other social media site) must act carefully when introducing changes.

I tend to think that these new fees are the result of necessity, and not of simple greed. That is, Twitter and Facebook need the revenue. If that is the case, then we users of web sites and social media may be in for more fees. It seems that simple, non-targeted advertising doesn't work for web sites, and targeted advertising (with no data sent to advertisers) doesn't work either.

Advertisements coupled with detailed user information did work, in that it provided enough revenue to web sites. That arrangement was ended by Apple's "Transparency in Tracking" initiative.

We're now in a "next phase" of social media, one in which users will pay for the service. (Or some users will pay, and other users will pay higher amounts for additional services, and some users may pay nothing.)