Instagram testing paid subscription for creators

"Launching a test of subscriptions on Instagram in the US today. This will help creators earn more by offering benefits to their most engaged followers like access to exclusive Lives and Stories. 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," said Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri in a video post on Twitter said, "This week we are launching our first version of subscription on Instagram. At the beginning of the year, I said we are going to build primarily for teens and creators, and subscriptions are for creators.

"Creators do what they do to make a living and it is important that it is predictable. And 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."

He said that the first version being tested in the US is with a relatively smaller number of creators and three major integrations.

The first is Stories, the creators can go live just for their subscribers who will have exclusive access to those stories. They will be marked with a purple ring so that the subscribers can know it is just for them.

The second is creators can go live just for the subscribers. and the third is that the subscribers will get a purple little badge - an indicator so that the creator knows one is his subscriber when they see him/her in comments, direct messages or anywhere else across Instagram.

"Over time, we hope to expand these features because it's important that subscriptions are integrated throughout the entire Instagram experience. We also believe that creators should own their relationship with their subscribers.

"So we are working on ways that creators can take their subscriber list and bring them off Instagram to other apps and websites built by other companies. We are going to grow it hopefully over the next couple of months, but starting with a very small number of creators to start. But we are very excited about this important step," Mosseri said.