Hi There!

Welcome to another episode of Ask Ash! Today, CNBC reported that Facebook is looking to help its creators avoid Apple’s cut off of in-app purchases by promoting offline transactions between creators and brands. As a result, Facebook is looking to heavily invest in the creator community, with the hopes of its creators to make a stable living off of Facebook’s family of apps.

The article can be read here: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/instagram-ceo-facebook-will-help-users-get-around-apple-cut-of-transactions.html

I wanted to bring up this article with Ash today, as having founded one of the world’s most recognizable entertainment and media brands, I thought I would get his perspective on if this will be a good move for Facebook in the long-run, and if we will end up seeing more creators on apps like Instagram and Facebook.

1) With Facebook looking to help its creators get around Apple’s commission through offline transactions and affiliate marketing, how do you see this benefiting Facebook in the long run? Will this motive hurt Facebook in the long run? 

FB is in an all out war with Apple over privacy, and with Google over advertising supremacy. So this is both to strike 

i) Apple with a better revenue share offering for creators, and

ii) Google/YouTube to compel creators to use them as their platform of choice.

That said, while tactically this is an aggressive move by Facebook which should help it in terms of market share and what not, but FB’s main challenge is they are “everything to everyone,” and they will occasionally focus on something, make noise, and then move on.

to me, I am not sure if FB will be as committed to the “Creator economy” as say for example YouTube… so unless this gains massive traction, they will move on to something else.

2)  Do you think we will see creators start to spend more time on Instagram and Facebook than other platforms like TikTok as a result?

I think Instagram is more compelling and native as a platform to creators, so yes, Instagram will continue to do well in the creator economy, whereas Facebook may already be too large.

Tiktok is a juggernaut, but the mistake is to think that all of these platforms are the same. I always reference Animal Farm: all platforms are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge for creators is clutter, the platform’s being inconsistent and burnout… so revenue share alone won’t address that! 

As always, if you want to ask any questions directly to Ash, you can do so by clicking the link here:

https://watchmojo.com/suggest/AskMojo%20-%20WatchMojo’s%20founder%20Ash