Elon Musk on Saturday introduced a plan for his Twitter platform to permit media publishers to cost customers on a per-article foundation with a single click on.
“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,” the billionaire entrepreneur mentioned on Twitter, including, “Should be a major win-win for both media orgs & the public.”
He mentioned the plan would start subsequent month, however offered no particulars on precise pricing or what minimize Twitter would take.
The announcement got here as Musk has been struggling, amid frequent controversy, to make Twitter worthwhile.
Rolling out subsequent month, this platform will permit media publishers to cost customers on a per article foundation with one click on.
This allows customers who wouldn’t join a month-to-month subscription to pay the next per article worth for when they need to learn an occasional article.…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2023
Media organizations have wrestled for years with how to formulate subscription plans that pay their working prices whilst readers have grown accustomed to getting information free on the web.
The Musk plan raises questions on how precisely he hopes to make the micro-payment method work when others have failed.
British journalist James Ball listed a number of issues with micro-payment — an concept, he wrote within the Columbia Journalism Review, that has “definitely occurred to major publishers across the planet.”
Many readers will merely click on away when encountering a paywall, he famous. And publishers “vastly” choose to enroll full-time subscribers, which convey much more in advert income than the 20 cents or so from the sale of a single article.
Several folks posting on Twitter raised different objections. The per-article method, they mentioned, may encourage a flourishing of “click bait,” it would favour huge publishers over small ones, and it’s unclear that authors — not simply information teams — would see any income.
But some on Twitter reacted positively.
“Great idea,” tweeted person 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.”
And Carlos Gil, writer of a e book on advertising, tweeted: “Finally, a pay-per-view for news that won’t make you feel like you’re buying an overpriced stadium beer. Get your articles à la carte and keep your wallet happy.”
