Meta Ends Threads Bonus Program

Meta no longer compensates creators for their Threads posts. Engadget has confirmed that the company quietly terminated the Threads bonus program earlier this year, which paid out bonuses of thousands of dollars per month to some creators, but it is still attempting to attract new people.

An Instagram support page that previously provided information about the creator incentives no longer mentions Threads at all, though the company has not formally stated why it paused the payments. Once-participating authors have stated in posts on Threads that they stopped getting paid at the end of April. About a year has passed since Meta began compensating creators for well-liked content. Creators who previously spoke with Engadget said they were able to receive monthly incentives ranging from $500 to $5,000 in exchange for meeting certain criteria related to post counts and views, even though Meta never made much information about the program’s operation publicly available.

What Meta’s future plans are for creators on Threads are unclear. The firm has tested features to assist users in finding well-known artists they previously followed on X, and it continues to work to entice additional companies and well-known personalities and individuals to the platform. Additionally, Meta has introduced tools that are more creator-friendly, such as the ability to add more links to profiles and more thorough app analytics.

However, Meta hasn’t yet made it clear what it can give creators in exchange. There is very little traffic coming from the platform to external websites. Building a following on Threads is also considerably more difficult because the platform defaults to an algorithmic timeline that primarily consists of suggested material. Accordingly, a post from an unknown account has a higher chance of going viral, although viral posts hardly ever result in a surge of new followers.

It’s possible that Meta is just figuring out that Threads has enough traction without paying users to create viral material. Mark Zuckerberg, however, has stated time and time again that he thinks the app has the potential to become Meta’s next billion-user platform. Without the support of creators, it’s hard to understand how that occurs.