Facebook Groups Monthly Subscription Fee Testing Underway

Facebook has launched a new monthly subscription fee feature for Facebook Groups, the company announced today. The new feature enables Groups administrators to add a monthly cost to the group, though Facebook says this is a pilot project at this time. Only a small number of Facebook Groups currently have access to the feature, but you may see a charge showing up on your own favorite Groups in the future.

Facebook Groups is the social network's way for people with a shared interest to get together digitally and partake in that interest. These groups can be public or private and they're controlled by an administrator who manages them. Those administrators will soon get to choose whether the group should come with a monthly fee.

The company is testing the feature at this point and it appears to be the result of requests from admins. It makes sense to offer a subscription feature as a default option given how much time some administrators spend managing their Facebook Groups and making content for them.

Facebook points out that some administrators already charge subscriptions for their members, but must do so in a convoluted way that includes a secondary subscribers-only group and manual payment tracking. The new feature simplifies everything by directly giving admins the tools they need.

For now, at least, the feature is limited to a very small number of groups and Facebook indicates it will be tweaking the product based on what it learns from them. It's unclear when the company plans to introduce the subscription fee as an option for all Groups.

SOURCE: Facebook