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Twitter Japan to launch paid service

Fri Nov 27 2009, 17:28 PM UTC

Twitter Japan is to start charging for a subscription service, in what many see as an experiment by the microblogging platform as it searches for ways to turn its popularity into revenue. Twitter’s Japanese subsidiary, which is run separately as a joint venture with Digital Garage, is implementing a tiered pricing policy which will charge users to see tweets from premium accounts.

Speaking at the Mobidec2009 conference, Digital Garage mobile COO Kenichi Sugi said Twitter account holders will be able to charge users for access to tweets or additional information such as URLs and photos. The platform will offer subscriptions costing between around USD1 and USD11.50, and take a 30% revenue cut. Users will be able to pay by credit card, shop-bought vouchers or via their mobile phone bills. There will also be a pay-per-tweet option.

Few commentators expect Twitter to introduce a subscription model in the rest of the world in the near future, and Sugi admits the model might not be suitable for markets outside Japan. Even if the Japanese model is a success, it may not be easy to transplant it to other countries. However, the introduction of the paid service suggests the firm’s leadership is at least keen to try out paid models.

The majority of revenues from paying Twitter users are likely to come from mobile use, say analysts, despite the service’s mobile site only going live last month. One analyst tells Brand Republic that paying for mobile content is more common in Japan, meaning it is more feasible to persuade people to pay for Twitter there than in other markets.

Reports in the Japanese media point out the subscription service would be ideal for those who provide real-time news content and educational material, as well as those who predominantly provide original additional content such as their own pictures, audio or video.

Although Twitter Japan is considered a testing ground for new ideas for the platform, there are significant differences between the service in Japan and elsewhere. Most of Twitter Japan’s users are over 35 and male, and it is yet to spread far beyond early adopters in the country. Japan is the only place where Twitter is approaching profitability, and the service has successfully sold display ads since launching in 2008.

Twitter has yet to embrace advertising in other markets, although the firm says it is working on an “amazing” new ad product it hopes to launch in the near future. Though Twitter has talked about setting up premium accounts, the only paid model the microblogging service has yet outlined for its US-based service is an analytics service for businesses.