Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk on Saturday announced a plan for the social media platform to allow media publishers to charge users on a per-article basis with a single click.
“This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per-article price for when they want to read an occasional article,” Musk wrote on Twitter, adding: “Should be a major win-win for both media orgs & the public.”
He said the plan would begin next month, but provided no details on exact pricing or what cut Twitter would take.
Photo: Reuters
The announcement came as Musk has been struggling to make Twitter profitable amid frequent controversy.
Media organizations have wrestled for years with how to formulate subscription plans that pay their operating costs, even as readers have grown accustomed to getting news for free on the Internet.
The Musk plan raises questions about how he would make the micro-payment approach work when others have failed. British journalist James Ball listed several problems with micro-payment — an idea, he said in a Columbia Journalism Review article “definitely occurred to major publishers across the planet.”
Many readers will simply click away when encountering a paywall, Ball said.
Publishers “vastly” prefer to sign up full-time subscribers, which bring far more in ad revenue than the 20 cents or so from the sale of a single article, he said.
The per-article approach could encourage “click bait” or favor large publishers, some people on Twitter said.
However, other Twitter users reacted positively.
“Great idea,” wrote Greg Autry.
“As a frequent author in publications like Forbes, Foreign Policy, and Ad Astra, I’m often frustrated when my work ends up behind a paywall that my followers aren’t willing to subscribe to. This is the right solution,” he wrote.
Carlos Gil, author of a book on marketing, wrote: “Finally, a pay-per-view for news that won’t make you feel like you’re buying an overpriced stadium beer. Get your articles a la carte and keep your wallet happy.”
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