Why Facebook’s $ 1 billion bet is a product

Last month, Instagram hosted the first Creator Week, an event the company said was “a three-day life-changing day with new stories and newcomers.” One of the downloads was CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who appeared briefly to deliver a message to the producers.

“I think any good vision for the future should affect more people so that they can earn money by articulating their skills and doing the things they want to do, not the things they should do – having the tools and resources around them to support their work is important,” he said. “Our goal is to be the best platform for manufacturers like you to make money.”

This week, Zuckerberg went a step further, announcing that Facebook was preparing save $ 1 billion by manufacturers by the end of 2022. These funds will support bonus programs, fundraisers and other fundraising programs to support all the creative issues on its platform.

Facebook is just earning a lot of money and support from developers not only about the opportunities the company sees, but also the amount they need to make.

Over the years, Facebook has done little for its creators. While Instagram has been a leading group for a long time, the company sometimes tries to limit their reach. Instagram founders say difficult with the growth of the seducers, I bring the obvious food that readers will see more posts from friends and relatives than those made by businesses.

While YouTube has been sponsoring for more than a decade, Instagram did not offer any form of revenue sharing until last year. And many manufacturers are often at odds with Instagram. The ever-changing nature of the industry raises doubts about whether it “blocks” or punishes users who post too much or on “wrong” topics.

“Facebook has been slow to play a leading role in helping producers in a profitable way,” said Qianna Smith Bruneteau, founder of the American Influencer Council, a commercial organization representing manufacturing companies.

But Facebook is now trying to change that mindset. Over the past year, the company has been exploring new manufacturing tools to make money. Since last May alone, the company has developed strategies to make money.

On Instagram, developers can now make money from business in IGTV or open them their stores. They can sell badges and items in live streams. On Facebook, they can receive paid events, promote subscribers, or sell in-app gifts in streams or chat rooms. Sooner or later, they will be able to launch paid newsletters, earn a living from their followers’ purchases and engage in them. market to market. The company is also introducing a number of new features bonus programs which pays manufacturers to sign IGTV ads, and make Reels or experience special events.

Zuckerberg and other officials now frequently talk about the products and opportunities they represent. The company is keen to win over the group that was promised not to spend their money until 2023.

Li Jin, founder of Atelier Ventures, a company that sells products to manufacturers, says the interest in manufacturing is due to the fact that the business has grown so much that it is not something that the platform cannot ignore.

“I think for a long time there was no reason to think of manufacturers as a separate sector that required special equipment or money,” says Jin. “I think what has changed is the realization that … what these manufacturers are doing is driving a lot of activity on the platform.”

The fact that Facebook is lagging behind in manufacturing resources also means that the company is facing stiff competition. TikTok, which has a well-known reputation with manufacturers, has just downloaded 3 billion, the first non-Facebook app to do so, according to analytics company Sensor Tower. TikTok users, and its Chinese counterpart Duoyin, together spent more than half a billion dollars on the program in the second half of 2021, alone. In the United States by 2020, TikTok was at the forefront of Facebook and Instagram in terms of user engagement, according to App Annie.

Meanwhile Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and other platforms are also pouring money into new ways of making manufacturers. “There are very few and everyone competes,” says Jin.

Facebook has provided a number of comments on the emerging popularity of manufacturers. Zuckerberg has said he wants to help more people “earn money” on Facebook activities. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri recently said the company is responding to “power transitions from offices to other countries in the industry.”

It’s a great opportunity to move Facebook’s business away from advertising. Although Facebook has promised that it will not cut production costs for more than a year, this will change (the company did not say what it would be like, it just did. be few more than 30% of Apple Commission).

Manufacturers can also encourage the company to buy. Advertising is the most widely used social networking site, which has already sold social media sites almost exclusively on Instagram, and Zuckerberg has said he wants to create a “complete business platform” for all Facebook activities.

What is not clear is how many people would like to buy a Facebook vision. While $ 1 billion will be a major contributor to the platform, it is unclear if it will live up to Facebook’s expectations. For example, Instagram Reels is supposed to be a competitor in the TikTok company. However, the company sometimes does Push the manufacturers sending the original text there.

And concerns about Facebook’s views remain, “Bruneteau said. “Algorithms should be as good for manufacturers as they are for TikTok,” he says. “You have leaders right now at TikTok, who have managed to grow and follow a million plus in less than a year. However, the same fighter fighters with accounts have a tendency to have fewer followers on Instagram.

There are indications that Facebook may be ready to address these issues. Mosseri recently raised eyebrows when he said Instagram is not anymore a photo sharing program, and that the company operates a one-size-fits-all approach to consumer diets to compete with TikTok.

But even it is kinder aligorivimu, both Bruneteau and Jin warn that producers should be careful not to post too much information on Facebook or any other platform.

“While manufacturers are developing their own solutions to this as intermediate platforms, they are actually making more profit than they can make on their own,” says Jin. “At the end of the day you strengthen Facebook’s control because when you put a lot of stuff in there, it attracts a lot of users and translates into Facebook revenue and Facebook results.”