It seems Twitter is poised to go into overdrive in Japan, the world’s third largest Internet nation. Yesterday, we reported that major mobile carrier SoftBank Mobile collaborates with Twitter to bring cell phones with Twitter pre-installed to Japanese customers. And today, Digital Garage (the company’s partner in Japan since 2008) announced [JP, PDF] Twitter’s co-founder and creative director Biz Stone has joined its advisory board. → Read More
We reported yesterday about Twitter Japan’s plans to start charging followers to view tweets from certain users starting January and explained why this paid subscription model could work in Japan.
Well, please forget it, this won’t happen. Just a few minutes ago, Digital Garage (the company responsible for Twitter operations in Japan), issued a press release (English PDF, Japanese PDF) stating there won’t be any fee-based services of any kind on the site and that Twitter in Japan will remain completely free for the foreseeable future. There’s also a blog post by the Twitter Japan team (who just copied and pasted the press release text, providing no further explanation). Digital Garage says the media reports on their plans to monetize Twitter are based on a “misunderstood presentation by a DG subsidiary, DG Mobile”. → Read More
The news of the day in social media land: Twitter is apparently going to start experimenting with paid premium accounts through its Japanese subsidiary, which has always been a bit separated from the rest of Twitter and in many ways a playground for the company (Groups, Twicco, Twitvideo.jp).
Japanese media are reporting that Twitter is going to introduce a tiered payment model and aims to charge people to view tweets from certain premium Twitter accounts.
Update: TC contributor Serkan Toto (who’s based in Japan) followed up with six reasons why this subscription model might just work out well for Twitter … in Japan. → Read More
Twitter Japan launched today at Twitter.jp via a partnership between Twitter and Digital Garage. It’s basically Twitter, in Japanese, with display ads. A sizable Japanese userbase has grown up around Twitter, despite the fact that it is only available in English. So this certainly makes sense. I’d expect support for other languages to follow shortly as well. And since Twitter is now a utility, there’s no need to bother making it stable before embarking on a glorious expansion crusdade. Congrats to the Twitter and Digital Garage Teams. See CNET for more. CrunchBase Information Twitter Digital Garage Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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