Should we pay for social media?

With the news that X (still can’t get used to calling it that!) may start charging people to use the platform. It got me thinking… should we pay for social media??

The X of it all?

I’ve written at length on the car crash that is Elon Musk’s reign as owner and one-time CEO of Twitter. But the disaster continues as just last week he suggested that the platform may start charging what he described as a “small monthly fee” to use X.

It's a terrible idea in and of itself but his reasoning is that it will help the platform combat the "vast armies of bots" that are currently overrunning X and keeping users and advertisers away. This is a problem Musk had previously suggested the company had a handle on boasting about its various tweets, sorry X’s.?

It’s also a problem that Musk has used to his own advantage turning his army of over 150million followers, a proposition of which will no doubt be bots, onto anyone who questions him or the direction he takes with X.?

But it does present an interesting question. Do we want to pay for social media? What is the value of the platform we currently have? If we pay for social media what is the role of brands and advertising and would this have to change??

But do we want to pay for it??

The question more directly of whether you pay for X is a fairly simple one to answer; no! In fact, I think few people would. It was suggested that just 28 legacy verified Twitter users signed up for Musk’s new Twiter Blue, or is it now X Blue, back in April.?

The service has over the last 12 months spiralled into a well of mis and information with a recent European Commission study even suggesting the platform enabled the spread of Russian propaganda ahead of the war in Ukraine and would have violated the Digital Services Act, the E.U.’s social media law, had it been in force last year.?

“Over the course of 2022, the audience and reach of Kremlin-aligned social media accounts increased substantially all over Europe. Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.” Digital Services Act - European Commission Report 2023

So, no personally I wouldn't pay for a platform that actively discourages safety. It also provides little in the way of real utility or value beyond still being the place I go to when there’s a breaking news event and here is why I would pay for social media. For the value and experience, it can provide outside of traditional media, entertainment or commerce.

But then I would say that,? I mean I’ve spent the last decade working in it so I must see a value to it. Over the last ten-plus years, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the world’s biggest brands to understand it and glean value from it. We’ve helped cultivate communities and grow some of the biggest brand-owned channels on social and here’s why I think we should pay for it.?

If we can tip the balance from a situation in which we are passive users of social media, and our actions, behaviours, and habits are mined for profit to one in which consumers pay for a product and therefore hold certain expectations around safety, value and in some instances the brand acting as a marker of self-expression for those who chose to consume it.

Perhaps then social platforms will take their responsibility to consumers more seriously, if the decision is do I pay for Instagram or Netflix suddenly Meta has to do a huge job in convincing you that the time you spend on the app is worthwhile.?

A clear value proposition

If we started being charged for every social media app which would you pay for? When we start to frame the conversation around the value of the time we spend on social media we start to compare them against other platforms we do pay for.

Ask yourself; is the time I spend on Instagram more valuable to me than reading a newspaper or watching a TV show? In this context, we start to see social media as media with all the necessary editorial rigour and responsibility that other major entertainment and media companies share.?

When we look at it like that it's clear that social media needs to do more than simply occupy our time and allow us to endlessly scroll not just the content of our friends but of people all over the world. Each platform needs to have its own distinctive value proposition and ensure this is compelling enough that people would want to pay for it.?

Had Twitter worked more closely with traditional media networks and become the defacto place for reliable and trustworthy breaking news and information then that is a valuable proposition I think many people would have been willing to pay for. In it’s current X state I struggle to see why anyone would want to pay for the app outside of the audience they have potentially built on the platform.?

Brands in the world of Ad-free

Should Musk push through with his plans to make X a paid-for service, others namely Mark Zuckerberg might look upon it as an opportunity to at least offer a tiered paid-for service for Instagram, Facebook and even WhatsApp with paid-for models having a reduced number or even removing advertising altogether. What would this mean for advertising and brands in the long term??

Well, I think brands will have to create more authentic connections with their customers and online audience in order that they earn the right to attention, engagement and interaction. Brands will have to create compelling content and tell rich stories much in the way the best content creators currently do. They will have to think much more strategically about every detail of the brand they are creating on social channels from the thumbnail creation to community management.

Ultimately brands will have to up their game knowing they can’t buy reach or attention in the way they have previously and it will force more rigour and strategic focus from brands who want to win on social.

Bring on the age of paid-for social media. I’m just not giving a penny to Elon Musk.

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