Tech companies are a copycat nowadays.
They are feeling insecure whenever a competitor launches something and they felt they have to do it too.
The most recent case being Meta, who is launching a paid verification service akin to Twitter Blue.
The service is called Meta Verified.
The ‘blue tick’ verified profile has been around for a while and it was only granted to personalities with big followings, for free.
Now Meta wants to charge for that verified status for US$11.99 a month on the web and US$14.99 a month on iOS/Android (due to the fees on App/Play stores.)
These prices are higher than Twitter Blue’s US$8 a month and $11 a month on iOS/Android.
This could be because Meta has a much larger platform than Twitter, with Facebook and Instagram under its umbrella. As a result, they have the leverage to ask for more money.
According to The Information, Twitter Blue has 290,000 subscribers or generate about US$28 million revenue a year.
The subscribers represent 0.08% of Twitter’s 368 million users. It is important to note that this was only two months into the launch.
There are currently 2.963 billion and 1.21 billion monthly active users on Facebook and Instagram respectively.
Assuming the same conversion rate for Meta, and using Instagram’s monthly active users of 1.21 billion, Meta might be able to generate an annual revenue of US$139 million within months.
The subscription numbers are likely to climb over time but even if the revenue rises to US$1 billion, it would not move the needle in the grander scheme of things – because Meta’s annual revenue is over US$100 billion.
That said, Zuckerberg seems to focus on generating revenue – Zuck talked about monetizing WhatsApp and Messenger too – than to talk about his metaverse spending.
I guess shareholders prefer that (even though his spending has not declined, he simply stopped talking about it.)
It is possible that any one of these new revenue streams might become substantial in the future. It is part and parcel of experimenting and see what sticks with the audience.
