I confess, I love Twitter. At first I didn’t get it and my friend Jane practically browbeat me into using it. Now I check it loads of times every day to keep up with what friends and fellow bloggers are doing, saying, reading.
But is it just a fad, like some of its detractors say? Maybe. But one thing a recent study showed: people don’t want to pay for it.
The prestigious University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication found in a study with almost 2,000 participants that no one is willing to pay for Twitter. Tough crowd.
I’m not sure I would pay for it either. Maybe £1 a month would be acceptable. But you can bet that as soon as Twitter started charging, someone would come up with a platform for using Facebook’s status updates or something similar as a substitute version.
What do you think? Would you pay for Twitter?
Tell us and tell us how you use Twitter in our poll.
About Jennifer Howze
Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.
MostlyYummy
Wednesday 11th of August 2010
I use Twitter more than I would care to admit *cough* and yes, I think I would be willing to pay a small nominal fee to use it. Facebook have toyed with the idea of charging people to use it in the past and it too has been met with most people saying that they would not be prepared to pay. I guess they all missed a trick by not charging people in the first place and it would now be very hard to convince people to pay for asomething that they have been using for so long for free. Just a thought!
Alex
Wednesday 11th of August 2010
Robert Ebert, the film critic, did a poll of his followers asking them whether they would be willing to pay. He got a better response than the Annenberg survey and an entirely different response- you can read about it here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/02/pay-for-twitter/
Jennifer Howze
Monday 2nd of August 2010
It is such a problem, trying to figure out how to make money off the Internet. Especially when it seems there are always new companies vying for the audience.
kerry @ miss power writes...
Monday 2nd of August 2010
I have Tweetdeck open all day but probably only click onto it 5/6 times per day (unless I'm involved in a particularly interesting conversation!) I agree that Facebook would likely evolve to provide the free service Twitter currently provide if they were to start charging. Bad business move methinks!
A Modern Mother
Wednesday 28th of July 2010
I try not to use it "too" much *cough** The opportunity to say too much, or be too candid, is very easy on Twitter, which I guess is the attraction. Would I pay for it? Hmmm, why would I pay for something I got for free? What is the new perceived value?