Musk: "Starting May, Twitter News Clicks Will Be Charged Per Click"

Twitter, which is seeking to generate revenue through paid verification, is now aiming to make money by charging for news link clicks.

On the 29th (local time), Twitter CEO Elon Musk directly revealed this plan through a post on his Twitter account. In the post, he said, "Starting next month, media companies will be able to charge a fee each time Twitter users click on an article."

Musk further explained, "(With this system) users can pay a small fee per article without subscribing monthly, allowing them to selectively read articles they occasionally want to see," adding, "This is a win-win for both the media industry and the public."

Unlike South Korea, where most news is provided for free through portal sites, in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, readers must sign up for online memberships and pay monthly subscription fees to read full articles from desired media outlets. According to Musk's explanation, for readers who do not read many articles regularly but occasionally want to read specific articles, paying per article on Twitter could be cheaper than paying monthly subscription fees.

Elon Musk Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

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However, Musk did not disclose how much the fee per article would be, how the revenue would be shared with media companies, or which media outlets and articles would be subject to this system.

Regarding this, the U.S. IT media outlet Business Insider evaluated, "This is part of Elon Musk's monetization program following his mass layoffs after acquiring Twitter." It suggests that the possibility of Musk, who is aggressively improving Twitter's profitability, offering a revenue structure favorable to content providers is low.

Since acquiring Twitter in October last year, Musk has introduced various revenue streams while reducing advertising revenue. After monetizing the official Twitter verification mark, 'Twitter Blue' (blue check), starting from the 29th, he also began charging corporate clients for using the Twitter Application Programming Interface (API). The API access fee is $42,000 per month (approximately 56 million KRW).

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