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The Creator Economy is pivoting away from Meta

If you want to gauge your reliance on a particular tool, then just wait for that tool to break.

Case in point: for the past two days, I’ve been unable to schedule posts within my private Facebook group.

The group isn’t very large — it now stands at around 919 members — but that’s by design. I only promote it at the bottom of my newsletter, and I’ve toggled the settings so that each person who tries to join the group is forced to answer a question: “How did you find this group?” If the person doesn’t answer that they found it via my newsletter, then I automatically reject them.

While limiting the group’s growth, this tactic has kept the signal-to-noise ratio strong. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to ban a commenter for posting spam or abuse, and the quality of the discussion within the group is fairly high. In order to maximize the amount of exposure for each post, I’ve used the platform’s scheduling feature to space them out at two-hour increments.

Or at least that’s what I used to do. Yesterday, I started receiving an error message every time I went to schedule a post. At first, I thought this might just be a temporary glitch, but then the error message has continued on to today. Whatever the problem is, it’s clear that Facebook’s engineers aren’t in a hurry to fix it.

This has forced me to ask myself a question that I’m sure Meta’s executives don’t want me asking: how upset am I by all of this?

Not very. By the time I got serious about building my own media business back in 2020, I had already decided that I wouldn’t invest much time or resources into growing my Facebook presence. While I’m sure the group helps me by providing an additional touchpoint for my audience, I’m pretty confident I could nuke my account tomorrow and it wouldn’t have a major impact on my business. In fact, the same can be said for Meta’s entire suite of products; while I maintain accounts on Instagram and Threads, both send negligible traffic back to the platforms that actually generate my income.

And I’m by no means an anomaly. I speak to at least a half dozen creators/media entrepreneurs every week, and it’s become increasingly rare for them to even mention Meta as part of their strategy. In the few instances where I do talk to someone with a large following on, say, Instagram, they seem entirely focused on moving that audience onto a platform where they exert more control, namely email.

And lest you think I’m relying too heavily on anecdotes, consider Meta’s increasingly desperate attempts to keep creators posting on its platforms. Business Insider reported that Instagram has been issuing virtual “badges” to accounts that post regularly, and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced earlier this month that the algorithm has been tweaked to ensure posts from smaller accounts go viral more often. It’s clear that the company is leveraging the use of meaningless metrics to distract creators from the fact that it doesn’t produce any real value for them.

This strategy is, of course, incredibly laughable, especially since every executive at Meta knows exactly what would spur creators to post more content to its platforms: actually paying them. 

In fact, you know what platform doesn’t have any problems motivating creators to post content? YouTube. As I wrote last week, YouTube has arguably become the most dominant cultural force across virtually every digital screen we access, and while there were lots of strategic decisions that led to that success, none were as consequential as the one made over a decade ago to share nearly 50% of the platform’s revenue with its creators. This triggered a flywheel effect that exploded YouTube’s reach and dominance.

Of course, Meta has dabbled in paying creators, but its approach has always been half-assed. With YouTube, I know exactly what I need to accomplish to qualify for its partner program, and I have a clear understanding of how its revenue share is calculated for both longform videos and Shorts.

Meta, on the other hand, has relied almost entirely on “creator funds” that are completely arbitrary in both their amount and how they distribute money. These funds are currently invite-only, which means there’s no clearly-defined path for accessing them.

The entire operation is pathetic. If Meta wanted to actually spur creators into truly investing its platforms, it would do three things:

1. Announce that it’s setting aside a specific percentage of its overall revenue for creator payouts.

2. Announce clear rules of eligibility for participating in these creator payouts. To join YouTube’s partnership program, for instance, you need at least 1,000 subscribers and a minimum number of watch hours. 

3. Develop engagement metrics that determine the amount each creator receives at the end of every month.

Would Meta’s profit margin take a hit as a result of these actions? Sure, but it would only be temporary, as they would trigger a huge explosion of creativity that would then increase the user stickiness of its platforms. Not only that, the move would engender a lot of good will from creators and traditional media — good will that Meta is in desperate need of.  

Or the company can just stick to doling out arbitrary “bonuses” to random creators on its platforms. While I’m sure those creators are happy to take the money, I doubt it’s instilling any long term loyalty, and they’re certainly not relying on it to build out a sustainable business. Today, there are entire warehouse studios devoted to the creation of YouTube content, and if Meta ever hopes to spur that same level of creativity, then it needs to establish a more credible path for creator enrichment.

What do you think?

Quick hits

The Village Voice "was, somehow, both an alternative newspaper for the streets and the intellectual class, capturing, as much as any publication could, polyphonic New York. It was a rowdy, chaotic place, fraught with tension even when it was profitable, and its demise was a great blow for the city and the rest of America." [Political Currents]

If you build an entire media company around a collector's item, then you should have a strategy in place for when that collector's item goes out of vogue. [WSJ]

ProPublica was founded in 2008 and mostly funded by two large donors. Today, it generates over $45 million in revenue, spread out across 54,000 donors. [Nieman Lab]

WashPo profiles Jim VandeHei, who I'd consider to be one of the most innovative media entrepreneurs to emerge over the past 20 years. [WashPo]

The consistent dominance of 60 Minutes over the past 50 years is pretty incredible. Audiences really do value in-depth, original reporting. [Axios]

INTERESTING: Data collected across 43 websites actually showed the rollout of Google Generative AI led to an increase in clicks to those websites. [Siege Media]

"I would say if you are looking to quit your 9-to-5 and make a career off of being an X content creator, don’t ... When it comes to the ad share, it’s really hit or miss ... There’s literally no transparency with how it is monetarily distributed." [Digiday]

The New Yorker drove signups to its newsletter by sending out articles by email before they were published to the website. This then reduced churn for paying subscribers. [Digiday]

This is a good profile of the executive who helped turn Netflix around after the company began losing subscribers in 2022. [Bloomberg]

"Executives at companies including Condé Nast, Penske Media, Vox, Hearst, and Time all told Semafor that Apple News+ has come to represent a substantial stream of direct revenue." The Daily Beast alone is generating upwards of $4 million in annual revenue. Some back-of-the-envelope math indicates then that Apple News+ now has over 1 million paying subscribers. [Semafor]

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