There are visible signs of creators’ economy taking off to a new revenue generation for Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta-owned social media platform Instagram. Of course, for content creators it opens up new paid subscriptions similar to earnings from Patreon, Twitter among other platforms.

To begin with, Instagram has introduced a pilot programme to dry run paid subscription feature to ten of its creators in the US and making subscribers pay anything from 99 cents to $99.99 a month to pay for exclusive content on Instagram Live (real time video streaming sessions) and Stories (photos and video posts that disappears in 24 hours) More creators and new territories will be added in the coming months.

This is a big boost to the creator economy which is estimated in the region of $100 billion dollars, with around 50 million creators around the globe.

Creators handpicked by Instagram for this pilot from USA include @alanchikinchow (actor and influencer), @sedona._ (basketball player), @alizakelly (astrologer), @kelseylynncook (actress model), @elliottnorris digital creator), @jordanchiles (Olympic silver medalist), @jackjerry (gymnast), @bunnymichael (artist and spiritual coach), @donalleniii(XR creator) and @lonnieiiv (digital creator).

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch on his official Facebook profile page stating that Meta Platforms is testing out a new “subscriptions on Instagram” service that will permit popular creators on the site to profit from their hundreds of thousands of followers by selling “access to exclusive Lives and Stories.”

“I’m excited to keep building tools for creators to make a living doing creative work and to put these tools in more creators’ hands soon,” he wrote in his page.

For now, the content creators can keep money earned from subscribers and Facebook will not take a cut. In the long run, Facebook will take a percentage cut from the creators.

Subscribers will be identified in purple coloured special badge to creators.

“Creators do what they do to make a living, and it’s important that that is predictable,” said Adam Mosseri, head Instagram in a video shared in Twitter.

Facebook also has a subscription program for creators.