Meta is no longer paying creators to post on Threads. The company quietly ended the Threads bonus program, which offered some creators thousands of dollars a month in bonuses, earlier this year, Engadget has confirmed.
The company hasn't officially commented on why it stopped the payments, but an Instagram support page that once listed details about the creator incentives no longer references Threads at all. In posts on Threads, creators who were once part of the program have said they stopped receiving payments around the end of April. That's roughly one year after Meta first started paying creators for popular posts. Though Meta never publicly shared a lot of details about how the program worked, creators who previously spoke with Engadget reported that they were able to earn monthly bonuses ranging from $500 to $5,000 in exchange for hitting specific metrics around post counts and views.
It's not clear what Meta's strategy for creators on Threads is going forward. The company is still trying to lure more brands and notable faces to the platform, and has tested features to help people find popular creators they previously followed on X. Meta has also added creator-friendly tools, like the ability to add more links to profiles and more detailed analytics for the app.
But Meta has yet to clearly explain what it can offer creators in return. The platform is hardly driving any traffic to outside websites. It's also much harder to build a following on Threads, since the platform defaults to an algorithmic timeline consisting mainly of recommended content. This means that it's easier for a post from an unknown account to go viral, but viral posts rarely lead to an influx of new followers.
Meta may simply be calculating that Threads already has enough momentum without paying people for viral content. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said he believes the app can be Meta's next billion-user platform. It's difficult to see how that happens without the buy-in of creators.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-has-ended-its-bonus-program-on-threads-201627935.html?src=rss
