Bluesky teases paid subscription, Bluesky+, in new mockup | TechCrunch
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Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is working on subscriptions. The company first announced plans to develop a new revenue stream based on

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/27733087

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is working on subscriptions. The company first announced plans to develop a new revenue stream based on the subscription model when detailing its $15 million Series A back in October. Now, mockups teasing the upcoming Bluesky subscription, along with a list of possible features, have been published to Bluesky’s GitHub.

  • ArchRecord@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    While a lot of us hate ads and subscriptions, I have the unpopular opinion that they are generally still viable considering the state of how we use the internet today.

    The thing is, I think that if there are ads, there should be the ability to pay to remove them, and if there is a subscription, there should be an ad-based tier as an alternative.

    Let your users choose, respect their preference for funding model, and allow them to choose if they want to support a given monetization policy.

    Of course, seeing as how they raised $15m from VCs, I doubt this will be nothing but what will inevitably devolve into a pay-for-reach scheme similar to Twitter Blue (or, sorry “X Premium”) that just leads to those with wealth getting more engagement, and a louder voice.

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I’ve never seen an ad-based tier on a Mastodon instance and the network does just fine 🤷‍♂️

      Without executives leeching money from going to the actual cost of servers things seem to work better! Go figure!

      • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Among every server that “do just fine,” there are more instances that are just gone for not having proper funding, especially for non-Western instance where paying for social media in not a common thing. I’m from Indonesian, and almost every Indonesian instance are cease to exist except for Misskey.id.

        While Mastodon does not support ads, other fediverse software like Misskey support it. Misskey.io, the second biggest fedi instance after Mastodon.social, runs ads and subscription simutaniously.

        Their ads is merely community ads. Letting their community promote their indie games, manga serialization, artbook release, online event gathering, etc. I think that might be replicatable for Western instance like Mastodon.art or Pixelfed.art.