Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In the morning of September 1, Beijing time, it was reported that an internal email sent to employees by Facebook parent company Meta last week showed that Meta was setting up a product team to explore and develop "possible payment features" for applications such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

This is Meta's first serious attempt to develop paid features in major social media apps, all of which have billions of users. Recently, Apple has adjusted the ad tracking capability of the iOS platform to protect users' privacy, while advertisers' spending in the digital advertising market has declined, both of which have dealt a heavy blow to Meta's advertising business.

The team, called New Commercial experience, will be led by Pratiti Raychoudhury, Meta's previous head of research. In an interview, John Hegeman, the senior leader of the team and vice president of commercialization at Meta, said Meta remained committed to developing the advertising business and had no plans to allow users to pay to turn off ads in the app.

"We do see an opportunity to develop new types of products, features and experiences that people are willing to pay for," he said. " He declined to specify what kind of paid features Meta is considering.

Currently, almost all of Meta's revenue comes from advertising, but Meta's social media apps already offer a small number of paid features. Previously, charging users has not been a priority for the social media giant. Hageman believes that the paid function is unlikely to become an important part of the business in the short term, but he also says, "on the other hand, if there is an opportunity to create new value and gain meaningful sources of revenue, and promote the diversification of revenue sources, this is obviously an attractive thing."

He also said Meta believes the pay function will become a more meaningful part of the business in the long run. "in five years, I do think the pay function will change the situation and make a significant difference."

At present, on the Facebook platform, group administrators can charge for some original content, and users can buy virtual "stars" to reward creators. WhatsApp already provides enterprise users with the ability to pay to send messages to customers. Instagram recently announced that creators can charge subscriptions for original content. In June, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Meta would not take a share of paid features and subscription transactions until 2024.

Over the past few months, social media apps have been exploring how to charge users. TikTok began testing paid subscriptions earlier this year, and Twitter already offers a paid Super Follows function, while Discord makes almost all of its revenue from Nitro paid subscriptions. In addition, both Telegram and Snapchat have added new paid packages this year to unlock additional features. Snapchat's paid package performed well in the early days of its launch.

"obviously, we are looking at what is happening in this industry," Hagerman said. "what a lot of companies are doing in this area is interesting. I hope that over time, we can learn and emulate."

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