{"id":5503,"date":"2019-02-05T14:36:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T14:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocialelement.agency\/?p=5503"},"modified":"2023-08-17T17:05:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T16:05:00","slug":"pay-to-play-subscription-model-for-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocialelement.agency\/pay-to-play-subscription-model-for-social-media","title":{"rendered":"Pay-to-play: would a subscription model work for social media?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Is a subscription model really beyond imagination? It\u2019s worth looking at digital media for comparison. It\u2019s been a rough month for them. BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post and VICE are just some of the news organisations that have had to make redundancies in recent weeks. And one – online women\u2019s magazine, The Pool – went into administration.<\/span> If we don\u2019t want to give our data to social networks, is it time they considered a different revenue model? The popular saying is that if you\u2019re not the customer, you\u2019re the product. We know the drill: in exchange for our free use of its platform, a social network sells our data to its advertisers.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"none","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"series":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/thesocialelement.agency\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/jordan-rowland-716475-unsplash.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/thesocialelement.agency\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Genuine-Humans.jpg","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"amazon":{"key":"amazon","url":"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/3abc34c3-ff60-4a78-b347-6119461b7ed1\/GENUINE-HUMANS","label":"Amazon","class":"amazon","icon":"amazon.png"},"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/gb\/podcast\/genuine-humans\/id1561811296","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVzb2NpYWxlbGVtZW50LmFnZW5jeS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Q?sa=X&ved=0CAYQrrcFahcKEwiQz-mM7dzvAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/7jkfw0qeUlwrauhfy2pCGU","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"},"youtube":{"key":"youtube","url":"","label":"YouTube","class":"youtube","icon":"youtube.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/thesocialelement.agency\/feed\/podcast","embedCode":"
\nIf we don\u2019t want to give our data to social networks, is it time they considered a different revenue model? <\/span>
\nThe popular saying is that if you\u2019re not the customer, you\u2019re the product. We know the drill: in exchange for our free use of its platform, a social network sells our data to its advertisers. We\u2019ve agreed to this, and many people have become complacent about what they share, who has access to it and what they can do with that information.<\/span>
\nBut then we saw the networks getting complacent with our data, too. In the wake of data scandals, there\u2019s a small but interesting demand for alternative social network models (that we\u2019ve talked about on this blog), such as: <\/span><\/p>\n\n
\nThe media industry is searching for a way to make money in a world where people use curated apps (like Apple News, which attracts around <\/span>90 million regular readers<\/span><\/a>) and social media to get their news fix for free. Many use ad blockers. <\/span>
\nTo try to defend quality content, some news sites have started to use paywalls, or ask for voluntary contributions (like <\/span>The Guardian<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>BuzzFeed<\/span> have done). It\u2019s debatable how successful this has been, with Buzzfeed, HuffPo and Vice making large redundancies and the Guardian itself being no stranger to regular rounds of cuts. But there\u2019s an interesting idea floating around – what if we could subscribe to one aggregated news feed, a <\/span>content hub<\/span><\/a> that lets us access all the news sites we want? A sort of Netflix or Spotify for news? This type of model has proven it\u2019s worth, with each sector it is used in, operating and ecosystem of one leader and a few runners-up who seem to be able to sustain themselves. <\/span>
\nPerhaps social networks could consider this, too, for people who don\u2019t want to donate their data, but still want to stay connected. It would put the user at the centre of what the network does. It shows a commitment from the user, but in return they would expect guarantees of content quality both from the network and its advertisers. <\/span>
\nAt this point, it is an idea worth investigating and it has already been roadtested years ago with aggregator sites such as <\/span>FriendFeed<\/span><\/a>. Maybe it\u2019s time to roll out Social Media Aggregator V2.0?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pay-to-play: would a subscription model work for social media?<\/a><\/blockquote>