Why Facebook’s betting $1 billion on creators
Last month, Instagram held its first-ever Creator Week, a virtual event the company described as “a life-changing three days with new feature news and celeb drop-ins.” One of those drop-ins was CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who made a brief appearance to share a message with creators.
“I think that any good vision of the future has to involve a lot more people being able to make a living by expressing their creativity and by doing things they want to do, rather than things they have to — and having the tools and the economy around them to support their work is critical,” he said. “Our goal is to be the best platform for creators like you to make a living.”
This week, Zuckerberg went even farther, announcing that Facebook plans to invest $1 billion in creators by the end of 2022. The investment will fund bonus programs, creator funds and other monetization programs to boost all stripes of creators on its platform.
That Facebook is funneling so much money and resources toward creators is indicative of not just the opportunity the company sees, but how much ground it has to make up.
For years, Facebook simply didn’t do much for creators. While Instagram has long had its own influencer community, the company has at times tried to limit their reach. Instagram’s founders were reportedly uncomfortable with the rise of influencers, and introduced an algorithmic feed to ensure users would see more posts from friends and family than brands and businesses.
While YouTube has offered monetization features for more than a decade, Instagram didn’t offer any kind of revenue sharing feature until last year. And many creators often felt at odds with Instagram. The company’s ever-changing algorithm fueled suspicions that it “shadowbans” or otherwise penalizes users who post too much or about the “wrong” topics.
“Facebook has been late to the game in terms of supporting the creative community in a meaningful way,” says Qianna Smith Bruneteau, founder of the American Influencer Council, a trade group representing the creator industry.
But Facebook is now trying to reverse those perceptions. For the past year, the company has been steadily churning out new tools for creators to make money. Since last May alone, the company has introduced a dizzying number of money-making features.
On Instagram, creators can now make money from commercials in IGTV or open their own shops. They can sell badges and products in live streams. On Facebook, they can host paid virtual events, promote fan subscriptions, or sell in-app gifts in live streams or audio rooms. Soon, they’ll be able to start paid newsletters, earn affiliate commission from products their followers buy and participate in a branded content marketplace. The company is also launching several new bonus programs that will pay creators for signing up for IGTV ads, creating Reels or meeting live-streaming milestones.
Facebook
Zuckerberg and other top executives now regularly speak about creators and the opportunity they represent. The company is so eager to win over the creator community it’s promised it won’t take a cut of their earnings until 2023.
Li Jin, founder of Atelier Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in the creator economy, says surging interest in creators is because the industry has gotten so big it’s no longer something platforms can afford to ignore.
“I think for a long time there was no need to separately think of creators as a distinct segment that was in need of specialized features or funds,” Jin says. “I think what changed is the realization that … these creators’ content is driving a disproportionate amount of activity and engagement on the platforms.”
That Facebook is late to the creator economy also means the company is facing an incredible amount of competition. TikTok, which has a reputation for a creator-friendly algorithm, just passed 3 billion downloads, the first non-Facebook owned app to do so, according to analytics company Sensor Tower. Users of TikTok, and its Chinese counterpart Duoyin, together spent more than a half billion dollars in the app during the second quarter of 2021, alone. In the United States in 2020, TikTok was significantly ahead of Facebook and Instagram in user engagement, according to App Annie.
App Annie
Meanwhile Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and other platforms are also pouring money into new initiatives for creators. “There’s a limited number of creators and everyone is in competition for them,” Jin says.
Facebook has offered various explanations for its sudden interest in creators. Zuckerberg has said he wants to help more people “make a living” off Facebook’s services. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri recently said the company was responding to “the shift in power from institutions to individuals across industries.”
It’s also a major opportunity to shift Facebook’s business away from ads. Though Facebook has promised it won’t take a cut of creators’ earnings for more than a year, that will eventually change (the company hasn’t said what its cut will be, only that it will be “less” than Apple’s 30-percent commission).
Creators could also provide a massive boost to the company’s push into shopping. Commerce has also been a major focus for the social network, which has already crammed shopping features into nearly every corner of Instagram, and Zuckerberg has said he intends to create “a full-featured commerce platform” across Facebook’s services.
What’s less clear is just how much creators will be willing to buy-in to Facebook’s vision. While a $1 billion investment will almost certainly fuel more interest in the platform, it’s not clear if it will prompt the kind of content Facebook might be hoping for. Instagram’s Reels, for example, was meant to be the company’s chief TikTok competitor. Yet the company has at times had to push creators to post original content there.
And concerns about Facebook’s algorithms remain, says Bruneteau. “The algorithm should be favorable to creators like it is on TikTok,” she says. “You have these instant influencers on TikTok, who have been able to grow million-plus followings in less than a year. However those same instant influencers who have those accounts have a tendency to have less followers on Instagram.”
There are signs that Facebook might be willing to address these concerns. Mosseri recently raised eyebrows when he said that Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app, and that the company was working one ways to insert more recommended content in users’ feeds in order to compete with TikTok.
But even with a kinder algorithm, both Bruneteau and Jin caution that creators should be cautious in throwing too many resources into Facebook or any one platform.
“When creators are building their processes on top of these like centralized platforms, they’re actually creating more value for the underlying platform than they’re able to create for themselves,” Jin says. “At the end of the day you’re strengthening Facebook’s dominance because the more content you put there, the more it attracts consumer users and the more that translates into Facebook revenue and Facebook’s network effects.”
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Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Launching second release of Facebook Reels API: An enterprise solution for desktop and web publishers
We’re excited to announce that the second release of FB Reels API is now publicly available for third-party developers. FB Reels API enables users of third-party platforms to share Reels directly to public Facebook Pages and the New Pages Experience.
FB Reels API has grown significantly since the first release in September 2022. The new version of the APIs now support custom thumbnails, automatic music tagging, tagging collaborators, longer format of reels and better error handling.
FB Reels API will also support scheduling and draft capability to allow creators to take advantage of tools provided either by Meta or by our partners. Based on the feedback we received from our partners, we’ll now provide additional audio insights via the Audio Recommendations API and reels performance metrics via the Insights API.
Our goal in the next couple of releases is to continue to make it easier for creators to develop quality content by adding features like early copyright detection and A/B testing. We’re also excited to start working on enhanced creation features like Video clipping- so stay tuned to hear more about those features in the future.
Call-to-Action
If you are a developer interested in integrating with the Facebook Reels API, please refer to the Developer Documents for more info.
Not sure if this product is for you? Check out our entire suite of sharing offerings.
Tune in to Product @scale event to learn more about FB Video APIs and hear from some of our customers.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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