By offering premium content to subscribers

Aug 3, 2009 14:32 GMT  ·  By

Twitter may not have found out how to make money from the services it offers but, slowly but surely, others are finding ways to capitalize on the microblogging platform's success. The startup SocialCord provides a platform for those with enough social influence to make money by offering premium content with a monthly subscription. This could be very useful for writers or bands, which can provide their most devoted fans with extra content and features while also making a revenue.

Those interested can sign up with the service on the site or send a direct message on Twitter to @tipcup. After this subscribers will receive the premium content through direct messages on Twitter or by other means. The content will be available for a flat-rate monthly fee but the best part is that there is no credit card necessary as users will pay through their mobile phone carriers.

Micropayments are increasing, starting to be used as an alternative payment method, and even Facebook will introduce a system sometime in the future. And, as far as micropayments go, this is one of the most straightforward made possible by partnering with the four major mobile phone carriers in the US, something that took founder David Dundas nine months to secure. Using the system is easy enough; those who want to access the premium content will fill out their phone number after which they will receive a PIN number through SMS. The code can then be used to gain access.

While the process is convenient for the user, it's not that rewarding to the one publishing the content. The carrier takes 45 percent of the fee outright, with the rest divided 55/45 between SocialCord and the content owners. Still it is an interesting solution and the service isn't aimed only at Twitter; Facebook apps and different types of content providers could potentially benefit from it. The problem for most, though, will be deciding what content to keep for the premium subscribers and for the users to see if the extra content is worth paying for.