Facebook is now Copying Twitter for Paid Subs

Meta still likes to copy others it looks like. ByteDance superiority and the verified account scam.

Hey Guys,

Even as Twitter barely got any paid “verified” subs among its supposed throngs of daily active users, Facebook is now thinking it can scam users into doing the same.

Meta announced a new paid verification subscription service called Meta Verified, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Sunday.

“Verified” Creativity

This as TikTok is rolling out a re-camped Creator Fund itself, which is actually much bigger news. TikTok announced recently that it’s launching the beta version of a revamped creator fund called the “Creativity Program.” The company says the program is designed to generate higher revenue and unlock more opportunities for creators. The program is available starting today to select creators on an invite-only basis, with availability to all eligible creators coming soon.

Facebook is such a loser company, I personally really despise its apps and try to avoid them at this point. For $11.99 a month on the web and $14.99 a month on iOS, users on Instagram and Facebook will be able to submit their government ID and get a blue verification badge.

The Facebook founder noted that providing direct access to customer support will cost "a significant amount of money," which will be made up for with subscription revenue. I recently got banned on Twitter for no reason with no reason give and an appeal that is taking well into a week, social media has become a zombie land.

I find social media getting into paid subs after harvesting so much of our personal data for free during the last two decades really nefarious and cheap. These platforms are typically echo chambers and rather low quality.

“This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuckerberg wrote in the post.

Enhance your Creativity - Become a Ideology Hacking Bot

Well TikTok is certainly about behavior modification against the mental health of GenZ, which National Security analysts are saying many years later is actually dangerous.

As for TikTok’s new flashy “Creativity Program” it didn’t say how many followers or views creators need in order to be eligible for the program. TikTok did, however, note that users need to be at least 18 years old and have an account in good standing to be eligible for the program. Good standing on an entertainment ideology hacking app, what does that even mean?

So here we are at an awkward intersection of the old and new internet, where even Facebook wants us to pay for the privilege? Outside of Facebook Marketplace, its ecosystem has nearly zero utility for consumers.

Facebook’s tendency to copy and clone others has made their entire “family” of apps sort of redundant and without a defined identity. I understand WhatsApp is important in some countries, but not the countries where I live.

It’s not as if Elon Musk got many of us to sign-up for Twitter verified, probably around 400,000 or less. That’s a pretty woeful conversion rate.

But when you claim to have 2 Billion active users, and don’t even have an app as stick as Snap, you have to wonder how Facebook defense the assault on its Advertising empire. $40 Billion stock buybacks, apparently!

Do I want to pay to see Stories/Reels spam on Instagram? It’s some of the worst content on the internet. Meta Verified would let Facebook and Instagram users pay to have a verified account. I’m more excited about YouTube Shorts, if I had to pick the woeful mobile video options of the day.

TikTok is gaming GenZ aspirational influencers. The Information indicated that the minimum requirement is 100,000 followers. If this is the actual criteria, then it marks a significant jump from the 10,000 follower requirement under the current Creator Fund.

I did predict 2023 would be about social media going behind paid subs and paywall models but the way Twitter and Facebook are doing it seems a bit lacklustre.

Elon Musk rolled out Twitter Blue soon after closing his $44 billion deal to purchase the company last year. He said at the time that Twitter was seeing a "massive drop in revenue" due to an exodus of advertisers from the platform. Zuck and Musk are clearly both past their prime. ByteDance however is not.

TikTok’s owner have done a lot of things right, and it’s way bigger than just TikTok. Even as Pico cuts jobs in VR, as Metaverse hype has dissolved for Generative A.I. hype trains, ByteDance’s foray into enterprise software solutions is going better than expected.

ByteDance’s Slack-like tool generated $100M in 2022

Feishu, ByteDance’s workplace collaboration app, surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue last year, Xie Xin, the chief executive of Feishu, told staff last Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

ByteDance has efforts in E-commerce, AI-as-a-Service among many other divisions. Meta hasn’t really diversified very well beyond Ads and this verified account thing is a bit of a joke.

ByteDance has at least six individual business groups. As China pushes closer with Russia, it only increases the chances TikTok will get banned in the U.S. Who are they kidding? China is making a lot of tactical errors in geopolitics and in limiting the global potential of their companies, although Temu is seemingly very popular (a Boston based company of Pinduoduo).

The ironic part is as Meta declines, there’s nobody who can compete with ByteDance globally. Of course Silicon Valley doesn’t fully realize what they are up against. Google and Microsoft remain somewhat myopic on their own native domains, though Microsoft trying to become a Gaming giant is a huge antitrust violation for the likes of Sony and others.

Creativity Program in Beta: TikTok taking YouTube marketshare

What if TikTok really dug into YouTube’s long-form advantage? That’s what this new Creator fund is REALLY all about.

To start earning with the program, creators will need to create high-quality, original videos that are longer than one minute. For context, TikTok’s current Creator Fund doesn’t require videos to be longer than one minute to be eligible for payment.

Last year, TikTok expanded its maximum video length from three minutes to 10 minutes, and is now looking to reward creators for posting longer content. TikTok’s focus on longer content isn’t surprising, given that the company has been creeping further into YouTube’s territory.