You will soon have to pay a monthly fee for accessing Facebook groups

Facebook has unleashed the kraken. Yesterday we reported that Facebook was monetising Facebook Messenger by introducing auto-play video ads in the Messenger app, and now the word is that the company is introducing subscription groups for admins on its platform.

The social media giant will now let group administrators of specialised groups to charge $4.99 (Rs 340 approximately) to $29.99 (Rs 2,000 approximately) a month for an exclusive membership. The first ones to get the subscription option as a part of the pilot testing program are the groups based on parenting, cooking and home cleaning.

"We know that admins invest their time and energy to maintain their groups, and some have told us that they would like tools to help them continue to invest in their community and offer more to members. Today, we're piloting subscriptions with a small number of groups to continue to support group admins who lead these communities," Facebook wrote in a blog post.

Free groups will remain intact for now on Facebook. The subscription group will work by creating an additional subscriber-only group that sits alongside their existing groups and rely on additional tools to track and collect payments from the group members.

"Subscription groups were created to make it easier for admins to provide these experiences with built-in tools, and to save them time so they can focus on offering members-only content. For members, they're now able to sign-up and manage their subscription through the Facebook app for iOS and Android," Facebook added.

Sarah Mueller who runs a group called Declutter My Home on Facebook, for example, will charge $14.99 (Rs 1,000 approximately) a month as a subscription fee. Similarly, Grown and Flown Parents, which is making group on college admissions and affordability will charge $29.99 as the subscription fee, The Verge reported.

On one hand, the subscription group feature will help the admins who invest a lot of their time and energy in maintaining these groups, but on the other hand, it will increase exclusivity, which in turn could drive away many group members.

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As of now, the subscription group feature is in its experimentative phase and Facebook won't get any fees from these groups. But for all we know, it could be one of Facebook's long term strategies to earn revenue from a source that features no ads.