Speaking at the Mobidec2009 conference earlier this week, Kenichi Sugi, COO of DG Mobile – a subsidiary of Japanese Twitter partner Digital Garage – announced that Twitter would introduce paid subscription options starting in January that will allow account holders to charge audiences who want to look at their tweets and access links to their external websites.
According to local reports, the plan will allow audiences to view some text on all tweets but will charge a fee to unlock access to certain images, external URLs and text. Users willing to pay to view the tweets can do so via a monthly subscription model, for which they can use a credit card to pay. They can otherwise buy a prepaid ticket with a credit card or at a convenience store. Finally, audiences can choose a pay-per-tweet option, which is charged to credit card, convenience store top-up cards or carrier billing for Twitter-on-mobile users.
According to the reports, the amount charged to each user will vary according to the charging account holders and is likely to range from JPY100 to JPY1000 (US$1.16 to $11.60). Twitter will take 30 per cent cut of the transaction fees.
This sounds like the first proper attempt to monetize Twitter and I’d imagine that if it works, it will be rolled out across all the countries and Twitter platforms. It’s always sad to see such a popular free platform suddenly turn into a money making machine, but I understand that everyone needs to eat!
Let’s watch this space and see what happens. Follow me on Twitter by clicking here and I’ll keep you updated.
