The number falls inside the larger amount reported earlier in the year: Facebook will be offering a whopping $50 million to those using its Facebook Live streaming service. Most of the money goes to media companies like Buzzfeed and the New York Times, but a random assortment of celebrities are in on it, too: “Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown ($244,000), Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps ($224,000) and “Star Trek” actor George Takei ($114,000)” are all included, according to the same WSJ article. Why the steep price?
Facebook Is Trying to Spark FOMO
FOMO stands for the fear of missing out. In a shaky media economy, publishers are constantly looking for the next big thing to save their business. Facebook knows that. By turning Facebook Live into that “big thing” via dumptrucks of money, Facebook is ensuring that publishers have no choice but to start using it. Mathew Ingram touches on this move in a recent write-up on Fortune:
Similar Tactics Built Reddit and Paypal
A similar, though different, approach worked to turn Reddit and Paypal into functioning economies. Both of these internet platforms used fake users to spur real users. As Motherboard writes, Reddit only picked up steam due to the creators populating it with fake accounts: Paypal also seeded their network intentionally, says Platformed: Facebook’s approach is more straightforward—give people money to start using their service—but it’s intended to have the same effect. Once the publishers who are afraid of becoming irrelevant jump on the network, they’ll turn a profit for Facebook Live, which has figured out how to monetize their fear.
