Twitter Starts Making Money… in Japan

November 28, 2009 at 11:48 am

Twitter’s Japanese partner is about to monetize the social media service, but only in Japan.  The partner, Digital Garage has thought of a pretty cool way to do it.  They’re going to charge the followers who subscribe to user’s tweets.  Followers can choose a monthly or single tweet billing and the user receives 70% of billed charges.  If a follower decides not to pay, they only see an excerpt of what is posted.

Will this work?  Possibly.

In the US, the model would be flipped where companies pay and followers would view posts for free.  But, it Japan it’s much different.  First off, the Japanese market is the only one to have an official Twitter mobile client and more people in Japan view content on mobile devices rather than laptops and desktops.  The gap is huge and is nowhere near shrinking.

Secondly, when viewing mobile content in Japan, you have to pay for this service.  So, it’s not as if Digital  Garage is injecting a new form of billing.

It goes to show that marketing differences can be as diverse as cultural differences.

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