One of the (many) new buzzwords of the last 12 months has been "creator economy", as the pandemic accelerated the appeal of platforms that helped content creators make money remotely. Patreon was one of the earliest platforms serving that movement, starting in 2013 as a way for creators to charge their audience for content, which could be text, images, video or some combination of all 3.
But the pandemic saw the meteoric rise of OnlyFans — a similar service (kinda) except that the majority of OnlyFans creators make explicit adult content. Or at least, they used to, as OnlyFans announced yesterday that it will ban sexually explicit content, which is sure to blow up their current business model.
No funding for you
The name OnlyFans could be used a descriptor for the company's own funding options. As Axios pointed out in a timely piece this week, OnlyFans has struggled to secure funding from big institutions, presumably because of the nature of their content, despite some stunning operating metrics: OnlyFans did $2.2bn in Gross Merchandise Value, and expects $5.9bn this year.
Presumably the company is hoping to diversify into more family-friendly content, in order to attract investment in the future? We left a question mark there, because we're not entirely sure.
