We recall back in the day when Facebook hit the zeitgeist in a huge way, it was suggested that the company charge a nominal fee for the service, and we believe it was a dollar a month. Easily affordable in most countries, and why not to bring family and friends closer. Of course, there are countries where a dollar a month is quite steep, and the company opted for eyeballs uber payment and they’d make their money via tracking you and offering up adverts.

As a note to self and a cautionary tale to founders: best to bake in the revenue model/premium services early in the game, as did, say, LinkedIn, who, when they hit a tipping point long ago – a year or two after funding – the company did maintain a free version, but also introduced a premium model and people were willing to ante up. It seems to have worked. We do believe that the company is still around. And with multiple revenue spokes. Also a good idea.

Re Facebook. Well, times change, as has Apple’s advertising policies: the company’s anti-tracking protections cost Facebook, now Meta, some $10B in ad revenue last year.

Enter Meta Verified, “that will allow users to add the coveted blue check mark to their Instagram and Facebook accounts for up to $15 a month by verifying their identity,” said Tech Crunch. “Meta Verified “is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

Security? Need we remind you that a few years back, a hacker stole information from half a million Facebook user, and the company never bothered to inform those users. But when your users number in the billions, meh.

Is the focus off?

As Kurt Wagner wrote in Bloomberg Technology, “Verifying user identities, for example, would help social networks fight spam, stop impersonators, and even enhance their existing advertising businesses, because marketers will know they are reaching real people… Still, what I find most telling about these subscription offerings is that the platforms will soon prioritize content from paying users over others. It’s a reminder that social networks have evolved away from the original premise of being a place to see mostly posts from your “friends and family.””

The announcement “follows social platform Snap launching its own subscription service last year, through which it has converted 2.5 million users into paid customers, and also Elon Musk revamping Twitter’s subscription service, Twitter Blue, to offer a range of additional features including the blue check mark,” which to date has managed to attract some 180,000 paid subscribers.

Seems that users aren’t the only ones who are paying the price for ‘free.’

The basic rules of business apply to everyone and hope this puts the final nail on the coffin to that long-held belief of the tech sector that they’re part of a ‘new economy’ that somehow defies those basic rules of business. As we’ve said many times, the waiter always comes around with the check.

Bloomberg Technology noted that, “I’m still not convinced a lot of people are interested in paying for services that they’ve always used for free, and Twitter’s early subscription woes provide some evidence. But people who rely on these networks for their own careers may eventually pay for the benefits. Everybody else will get a second-class experience.”

But hasn’t that traditionally been the case with Facebook? So nu?

With tongue held firmly in cheek, and as with Zuckerberg’s metaverse, we wonder if this once vaunted master of all that he saw and then some might once again have missed the mark. Onward and forward.