Recently, the Peakd interface releases "Snaps" their short-form content similar to other interfaces and InLeo released paywall functionality, which allows creators to put subscriber-only behind a monthly paywall, with a subscription price of 5 HBD a month.

Snaps is clear enough, as even though I prefer to write articles for people to engage with, I get that some people just want to commentate on random events that are more "in the moment" like on Twitter. Personally, I don't see it as an overly healthy process as demonstrated by Twitter, but that is my opinion.

The Paywall on the other hand is less clear, but it is something that I have been mentioning on and off for about seven years now, but it hasn't been implemented. While many people don't like paywalls as they believe everything on the internet should be free, I am of a different mind, as there is no such thing as free content. There is always a cost and this comes through ad revenue models and data selling to improve and maximize the ad models. There is a space for ads on the internet, but the amount of reliance on it throughout the ecosystem has lead to a host of perhaps partially unintended outcomes, that are being leveraged to make the world worse.

Again, my opinion.

I am sure that rather than diving into that here, you might be able to find an article out there as to the many implications of ad revenue models for both the audience, and the reliance on them for corporations, whichever you are more interested in.

In 2023, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) generated $116.6 billion in revenues, of which $113.6 billion, or 97.5%, was from ads. According to its latest financial report, in Q2 2024, of the $39.1 billion in revenues the company made, $38.3 billion (98.1%) was from ads.

Facebook is free?

No one really likes to pay for anything, but SaaS models of business like Netflix and Spotify has normalized subscriptions for younger generations in the same way that many older generations would order newspapers. Of course, once it went digital, the scalability of a product expands enormously, while the cost of distribution plummets. Couple this with the cost of production coming down also with the likes of generative- AI and automation of processes, and it means that there is far more content being produced.

What this means is that people will increasingly have to decide on what they are willing to pay for, and for the most part, it isn't what people are getting for free now. For instance, using the idea of snaps, would you be willing to pay 5 HBD a month to see random thoughts from an individual specifically? Or if you are on TikTok, is there an individual creator you are willing to pay 5 HBD a month to see? And then, how many creators are you willing to pay for in a month, and what kind of content do you expect from them?

OnlyFans type?

See, there is content creators and content types that people are willing to pay for in order to get behind the wall, but it is a pretty niche set. There are also for instance podcasts that people are willing to pay for also in order to get exclusive content, but that tends to come from personalities who have already established their audience base, and are now opting out of ad revenue models, because they have seen the impact of it on their content, or don't want to have to be beholden to advertisers in the future.

Is there space on Hive for subscriptions?

The short answer is;

Absolutely.

However, I am "pretty sure" that it is going to be a slow burn at least to start with, because just like the internet with a lot of "user-generated" content, people are used to getting it free. On Hive, even without having any HP to add monetary value to an article, people can read. However, there could be space for content that is more tailored to specific users, like larger stakeholders, but for the most part, the majority of content is generally for a wider audience.

There might be users like me who want to add different kinds of content to value add to my blog. For instance, While I probably wouldn't put written articles behind a paywall, I could add videos there that go more in-depth on certain conversations, or have "Ask Me Anything" content or answer subscriber submitted questions behind the paywall. Ultimately though, it wouldn't be about increasing earnings as much as adding value for some to justify the public earnings also, as well as give a way for those interested to support directly if they choose.

In order to have "subscribers" it means being a Premium member of InLeo (10 HBD a month), which I did last night for the next month to see what it is like. I now have a checkmark next to my name.

Yes... I chose the pink theme.

For at least the next month, I will be able to test the platform Premium membership a bit more and perhaps do a writeup on it at the end, to see if I will continue. What I do like about InLeo, is that the team does keep developing capabilities of the platform, though I wish that there was slightly better content in the feed on average, as I feel that there is a lot of short spam that doesn't add much value in any way.

My opinion once more.

Despite what some might believe, I am not against short-form content, but I do question how much it is worth on a platform like this in terms of what it should be rewarded from the shared distribution pool. Remember, very little of this content is doing what it does on the centralized platforms, because Hive doesn't work on an ad revenue model like them, it works on a user invests model. A user can be a creator or a consumer of some kind, and the content type, topic and the investment itself can take multiple forms, but at least in the back of the mind, people should be a little more intentional with why, what and how they are creating, or supporting.

I don't expect anyone to subscribe to see under my paywall, but I also don't have to create anything there, so there isn't a loss for me, other than the cost of the possibility of Premium. That is okay though, as I think that if we want to break out of the tyranny of centralization, we have to recognize that we are going to have to pay something for ourselves. We have to learn that to benefit as an owner, we have to take the responsibility of an owner, and that comes with maintenance costs, governance costs, social costs.