In an apparent effort to compete with creator subscription services like Patreon, Instagram began an alpha test of a subscriber feature in January. Today, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced an expansion of the test features, along with some updates around how the last six months of development have gone.
When the feature began testing in January, only 10 creators had access to the feature, like Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles and astrologer Aliza Kelly. The initial alpha rollout supported subscriber-only stories, subscriber badges and subscriber-only livestreams. Now, according to Mosseri, tens of thousands of creators have access, and the slate of subscriber-only features is expanding. New updates to Instagram subscriptions include subscriber group chats, reels and posts for subscribers only, and a subscriber-only tab on a creator’s profile, so paying fans can see the content they’ve unlocked access to.
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