Recently, online social media giant Instagram (NASDAQ: FB) began testing a feature that would allow its users to soon subscribe to a variety of different creators and influencers in order to gain access to certain content and features.
The company stated in a blog post that it would be coming out with some subscriptions tests with the intention of implementing more creators into its platform in the near future. Creators have presented eight monthly options of prices to pick from for the test subscription launch.
According to an Instagram spokesperson, these prices are: 99 cents, $1.99, $2.99, $4.99, $9.99, $19.99, $49.99, and $99.99. Instagram Subscriptions will ultimately enable creators to give live streams as well as share disappearing posts via Stories. There will additionally be badges next to their follower names in order to distinguish paying subscribers from non-paying ones.
"Creators do what they do to make a living, and it's important that that is predictable," Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, stated in a recent Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) video. "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."
Some of the options that Instagram users will have in terms of subscriptions include Subscriber Lives (creators' broadcasting of Lives to their subscribers), Subscriber Stories (creators' making of stories and the permission to share exclusive material), and Subscriber Badges (the placement of badges near subscriber comments and messages, as previously mentioned).
Despite the fact that this subscription feature will only be accessible to a select amount of United States creators during the first test launch, Instagram nevertheless has intentions of providing more access to a greater amount of creator in the upcoming weeks and months. According to Mosseri, he hopes to enable Instagram creators to make their subscriber lists and platforms go beyond Instagram to that of other platforms, which will in turn provide even more publicity for Instagram as a whole.