The latest from TechCrunch
- Twitter Japan To Introduce Paid Premium Accounts Next January
- Investimonials Wants To Be Your Guide To Quality Financial Products
| Twitter Japan To Introduce Paid Premium Accounts Next January | Top |
| The news of the day in social media land: Twitter is apparently going to start experimenting with paid premium accounts through its Japanese subsidiary ( Twicco ), which has always been a bit separated from the rest of Twitter and in many ways a playground for the company ( Groups , Twitvideo.jp ). Details are sketchy at this point, but 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. Twitter Japan, which is operated under supervision of Twitter investor Digital Garage , launched in April 2008 and boasted display ads right out the gate. At a conference earlier this week, Kenichi Sugi, COO of DG Mobile (a Digital Garage subsidiary), announced that Twitter would now add paid subscription options starting in January 2010, allowing account holders to charge audiences for access to their tweets, more text, images, links to their external websites and so on. Billing would be done on a monthly basis for a price that ranges from 100 Yen (approx. $1.15) and 1000 Yen (which converts to roughly $11.5). Users will apparently be able to use their credit cards or mobile carrier invoice to pay for the premium service, or even purchase a prepaid ticket at a convenience store. Finally, Twitter will be taking a 30 percent cut on transaction fees. The assumption is that this model would be fit for account holders who deliver real-time information, news and educational content, and tend to include original photographs, video images and audio in their tweets. The idea isn’t exactly brand new: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone mentioned earlier this year they were thinking of commercializing accounts as a way to get some revenue out of the popular service. But the surprising part is that people will actually be charged for access to premium accounts, rather than having holders pay for them. At least, in Japan. If I were a betting man, I’d say this is not something Twitter is going to be rolling out in the rest of the world any time soon though. (Thanks for the tip, Paul Papadimitriou and ITmedia for the image below – more coverage at The Next Web and Brandrepublic ) Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 | |
| Investimonials Wants To Be Your Guide To Quality Financial Products | Top |
| If you’ve ever tried searching the web for financial advice, you probably know just how much junk there is out there. Sure, there may be a few diamonds in the rough, but oftentimes the best results go to the finance ‘experts’ who are good at SEO – not the ones who know what they’re talking about. Investimonials is a new site launching this week that’s looking to offer an unbiased view of the variety of financial brokers, services, videos, and books out there. And to do that, it’s turning to the site’s community to submit their own reviews (it’s essentially a TripAdvisor for financial goods). The new site was founded by Timothy Sykes , a controversial financial expert who was named to Trader Monthly’s 2006 “Top 30 under 30″ and had a once-successful hedge fund that shut down in 2007 after taking heavy losses. Since then, though, he’s mounted a comeback and is now one of Covestor’s top ranked traders (though some people aren’t fans of his tactics). Sykes says that his goal with Investimonials is to help users cut through the spammy and scammy financial sites that litter the web, by offering a comprehensive hub of user reviews for each product. Investimonials will be launching with eight categories, including the top rated Brokers, Newsletters, DVDs, Books, and websites, with plans to have “dozens” over the next few years. At launch the site has 3,000 products ready to review, though the vast majority of them haven’t been reviewed by anyone yet. Sykes says the primary competitor in this area is EliteTrader , which has been around for a decade and has around one thousand total reviews (the site also looks pretty dated). Investimonials incentivizes users to write reviews and share their personal contact information by offering ‘iv bucks’, which can be traded in for prizes. Many of these are Sykes’s own products, though there are a variety of prizes from others as well. Investimonials seems like a good idea, though it’s going to have to be very transparent if it wants to avoid constant accusations of bias. And as with all review sites, it’s going to suffer from the chicken-and-the-egg problem – until it has a lot of reviews about products, few people will have a good reason to use it. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | |
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