These are not the best times for social networks. Neither for Twitter nor for Metathat social network known until about a year ago as Facebook. The technology company is suffering due to the slowdown in the advertising business – its most important by far – and the huge non-refundable expense involved in building that new virtual world known as the metaverse, in which Mark Zuckerberg it is overturned All this is leading the company to look for new sources of income, and among them are future ones payment functions on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
This is how the technology company collects it in a memorandum to which the specialized media ‘The Verge’ has had access. As indicated, the company has created a division in charge of finding and creating possible functions that would force the user to make an extra outlay.
The arrival of payment functions against the policies that Meta has maintained to date. The technology company had always preferred to keep its social networks freely accessible, betting on doing business with the data of Internet users. At the time, he even undid the plans of the previous management of WhatsApp to start asking users for a small annual payment to continue using the ‘app’.
The group, called ‘New Monetization Experiences’, will be led by Pratiti Raychoudhury, who was previously the tech’s head of research. The company’s plans to start looking at payment options on its social networks do not go against the company remaining focused on squeezing out the ad business, which accounts for nearly all of Meta’s profits.
“I think we see opportunities to create new types of products, features and experiences that people would be willing to pay for and excited to pay for,” said John Hegeman, Meta’s vice president of monetization, in conversation with the aforementioned medium.
In principle, the company’s objective is that payments for functionalities help improve accounts in the medium term. At least, as the construction of the metaverse reaches its peak. It should be remembered that Zuckerberg expects that, in the next ten years, the new virtual world will be the main source of business for the company.
While that is happening, Meta must figure out how to keep the profits, since the money being spent on building the metaverse comes directly from the company’s social networks. In recent months, the company’s Virtual Reality division, key in achieving the new virtual world, has posted losses of billions of euros quarter after quarter.