Facebook announced during this day the launch of special subscriptions for the posts that can be made within the social network, the change being a major one. Facebook introduces these subscriptions to please the owners of online publications who complained about the fact that they do not generate income due to the instant articles they publish within the social network.
Facebook meets their wishes and introduces the possibility of paying subscriptions to view the information from some instant articles published within the social network. According to those from Facebook, online publications will be able to allow users to read a maximum of 10 posts in a month without paying a penny, but after reaching this threshold, they will have to subscribe.
Facebook is trying to create within its social network the same type of payment system that major online publications already have within their own websites. There they impose the payment of subscriptions to read more than x articles per month, and Facebook will impose exactly the same thing for people who use the social network and read the articles of major online publications in their daily life.
Facebook introduces post subscriptions
Facebook will start testing the new subscriptions in October, so they will not become active until the beginning of next year, because tests of this kind require a long period of time to verify their viability. If Facebook considers that subscriptions can be introduced without affecting the network, then we will see them active starting in 2018 and we will complain about them ever since.
Facebook will allow subscribers of these online publications to have free access to instant articles if they already pay a subscription for the publication's website. This will mean, practically, that people will stay on Facebook to access all this content and will no longer have any motivation to access the publication's website to find out all the news and updates, which is exactly what the company wants.
Facebook and Google are being attacked by publishers from all sides, who are asking the US Congress to enact a law that will take away some of the power that the companies have. Facebook responded immediately with this initiative to launch subscriptions for Instant Articles, but in the end it is the regular users who have to lose because they will have to pay on Facebook to read information.