Instgram users will soon be able to subscribe for exclusive content from their favourite influencers. The feature, which will first be launched in the United States, has been launched in a testing phase starting today. The company announced the new feature in a blog post, saying that it is testing with a small number of creators, and more influencers will be added to the platform in the coming weeks. Initially, only 10 creators are a part of the early test, which include a basketball player, an olympian, an astrologer, and more.
With the new programme, Instagram users will be able to pay a monthly fee to access subscriber-only content from creators that they follow. This “exclusive” content will feature exclusive Lives and Stories from your favourite creators. Subscribers will get a purple badge by their username that will signal their status as a subscriber to the creator. There are price tiers as well, which range from $0.99 (roughly Rs 73) to $99.99 (roughly Rs 7,400) per month. These prices will be selected by the creators, and Instagram will not take a cut of this revenue, at least till 2023, the product’s co-head Ashley Yuki was quoted in a TechCrunch report.
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The 10 creators that are part of the early test include basketball player Sedona Prince, Olympian Joran Chiles, and astrologer Aliza Kelly. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of parent company Meta said, “I’m excited to keep building tools for creators to make a living doing creative work and to put these tools in more creators’ hands soon,” in a Facebook post.
In another video, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that subscriptions are “one of the best ways” for influencers to have a predictable income from Instagram. A report in The Verge hints that many influencers were already charging followers a fee for being added to their “Close Friends” list to get access to exclusive stories that aren’t accessable to all their followers.
Instagram is not the first app to bring such a system to its platform. ByteDance’s TikTok, Instagram’s rival introduced a similar in 2021, while Twitter also announced a Super Follows feature last year that allows creators to offer additional subscriber content on Patreon or Substack.
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