For anyone who runs a Facebook group there is a fine balancing act between letting in everyone and anyone and making a group too exclusive. One side allows in people who may not really be interested in a subject and just want to rile up people and the other turns away people who do not want to go through all of the rigamarole of trying to get into an exclusive group. Facebook may have found a middle ground that gives a group administrator another option: monthly fees in the form of a subscription.
New monthly memberships
In June Facebook announced that group administrators would be allowed to charge a monthly fee for membership in groups. The test run in limited to parenting, cleaning and cooking groups. Rates can range from $4.99 per month to $29.99 per month. Groups that are free will be able to remain free and that will also remain as an option.
Facebook stated that the decision to do this is so that group admins and content creators (in many cases the same person) who put in a lot of time and effort can be compensated for their efforts. It is hoped that they will be able to create higher quality content with more posts, videos and events. Facebook will not receive a cut of the fees but Apple and Google will as the subscription is billed through their respective app stores. With more than one billion Facebook Groups users this could be a major financial windfall.
Benefits of a subscription service
The main benefit is that a monthly fee will filter out the riff raff and trolls and content creators can now be compensated for their work without having to provide it for free. These groups will now have only members that want to be there. It is hoped that more groups that provide access to professional services will be able to attract more experts and be able to provide better service for its members. Of course with admins and content creators being compensated the groups will now no longer be a labor of love but will only improve as they could have more time as they will have to work less at another job.
Surely not everyone will be happy
Of course there will be blowback to this as no one likes to go from a service or platform that was free to something that they must pay for. Something like this though has probably been inevitable. Members of a group will be invited to subscribe and will receive a card previewing what they will receive and how much it will cost. A larger group will still exist that users can subscribe to for free in most cases. Subscriptions are done on a monthly basis and can be cancelled at anytime. It is similar to the patronage platform Patreon that many content creators use to generate income.