It’s happening: After months of testing and leaks, Meta is rolling out its long-awaited memberships for three of its most popular platforms. Starting today, users can subscribe to “WhatsApp Plus” for $2.99 per month, “Facebook Plus” for $3.99 per month, and “Instagram Plus” for $3.99 per month. As you’d expect, these subscriptions are entirely optional, and they add some novel and interesting features for power users: Facebook and Instagram’s subscriptions are aimed squarely at creators (and a subset of lurkers). But these changes beg the question: As a regular user of these platforms, is any of this for you?
Instagram Plus removes list limits and adds lurker-friendly features
Credit: Jibin Joseph/PCMag
As reported by TechCrunch, Instagram Plus comes with a set of new features for stories. You’ll be able to see how many people have rewatched your story, and you’ll be able to create an unlimited number of custom lists that go beyond Close Friends. You can create different audience lists for different kinds of content and post only to the specific set. For example, for personal use, you can create lists for sharing stories with just your family, colleagues, or friends.
With the plan, you can “Spotlight” a story for a week and extend a story beyond the current 24-hour limit. You can search through your story viewer list to see if a particular profile viewed your story, and you can finally preview a story without showing up in the viewed list—a feature many users have been asking for, and finding workarounds in the process. Users can also react using “super heart” animations in stories, and customize their bios and profiles with new fonts, icons, and additional pins.
WhatsApp Plus adds some power-user features and customization options
The feature list of WhatsApp Plus is pretty light right now. If you subscribe, you can finally pin more than three chats up top (up to 20 now). You can customize chats with custom alerts, ringtones, and themes. There are unique color and theme options for the app itself, and multiple icon options. You can also send exclusive “premium stickers” with added special effects that aren’t available for the free users. However, that’s all you get for $2.99 per month.
Facebook Plus adds new story enhancements
As TechCrunch highlights, Facebook Plus’s feature set is quite similar to Instagram’s subscription, though it’s particularly focused on stories. Facebook users will be able to extend their story to 48 hours (instead of the regular 24-hour window), send super reactions to stories, search through stories, and get insights into how many times their stories were rewatched.
The Plus plans don’t replace the Meta Verified membership, which focuses on identity authentication for creators. However, Meta is also testing two new plans at this time: Meta One Plus for $7.99 per month and Meta One Premium for $19.99 per month. The base Meta One Plus plan lets users generate AI images and videos, adds a “Thinking” mode, and gives higher compute limits compared to free users. The Premium plan has higher capacity for image generation, deeper reasoning skills, and higher compute access. (Meta hasn’t provided hard numbers for anything yet, and given this is a test, it’s bound to change over time.)
What do you think so far?
Confusingly, there’s also a $49.99 Meta One Advanced plan that’s designed for creators. It gives users higher visibility in Facebook and Instagram feeds and search results. It also unlocks advanced analytics, audience insights, and scheduling tools, among other perks. In an Instagram video, Naomi Gleit, Head of Product a Meta, said that while they are testing multiple subscriptions right now, eventually they see it all coming under the Meta One umbrella.
If, like me, you were hoping for an Instagram subscription to remove all ads and junk, this isn’t it. And perhaps that’s never going to be the case. The Plus subscriptions are clearly aimed at creators big and small, as well as power users who would like a few customization options.
If you’re a regular, run-of-the-mill WhatsApp and Instagram user, there’s little to be gained by these subscriptions. The ability to pin more users is nice, but not worth $3 every single month. The strongest case can be made for Instagram if you run a page with a sizable audience, or have an Instagram page for your business or side project. The additional data analysis, customization options, and the stories list can help you stand out. The rest, though, is mostly not worth it. I hope that this is just a teaser and that Meta keeps adding more features to the subscription (without raising the prices) to make the deal sweeter.
