The billionaire and Twitter owner Elon Muskannounced a plan for its platform to allow news outlets to charge users to read their articles when they click on links.
Musk had anticipated this month that users could soon offer content subscriptions, including text and video, and that he planned to collect 10 percent of profit of that service past initial 12 months.
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should be a big win for both of us,
media organizations and the public
«This allows users who would not hire a monthly subscription pay a higher price, when they want to read an occasional article,» said the magnate on his Twitter account.
He added: «It should be a big win for both the media organizations and the public.» He said that the plan would start next monthbut it did not have the price or what slice it would take to Twitter.
The announcement came as Musk has been fighting, amid frequent controversy, to make Twitter profitable. The media have also struggled for years to formulate subscription plans that allow them to cover their operating costs, especially when readers have become accustomed to getting free news on the Internet.
Musk’s plan raises questions about how he hopes his form of micropayment will work when others have failed. British journalist James Ball listed various problems with micropaymentsan idea that «definitely has occurred to major publishers around the planet,» he wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Many readers give up as soon as they find a paywall, said. And publishers «widely» prefer to have full-time subscribers, who generate far more ad revenue than the 20 cents or so a single article sale might bring.
However, some on Twitter reacted positively. «Great idea,» tweeted user Greg Autry. «As a frequent author in publications such as Forbes, Foreign Policy and Ad Astra, I often get frustrated when my work ends up behind a paywall. to which my followers are not willing to subscribe. This is the correct solution.»
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Finally, a pay-per-view for news that
I will not make you feel like
if you were buying
an overpriced stadium beer
And Carlos Gil, author of a book on marketing, tweeted: «Finally, a news pay-per-view that won’t make you feel like you’re buying overpriced stadium beer. Get your items on demand and keep your wallet happy«.
Musk, who bought Twitter just over a year ago, has taken notorious measures such as subscription changes Blue Twitterwhich under his leadership became paid when before personalities and organizations were supported free of charge.
The businessman too laid off 80 percent of its workforceauctioned off its office furniture and recently announced it would limit access to its application programming interface (API) – software tools that allow outside researchers and developers to collect and analyze data – and will charge a fee in most cases .