14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like Twitter may not be getting any paid accounts after all, at least not in the way we've been initially expecting, despite the detailed reports from last week. Digital Garage, the company which runs Twitter in Japan, has issued a statement which boils down to 'it's a misunderstanding, there won't be any paid accounts for the foreseeable future'.
After the news of the paid premium content started making rounds, the company wanted to set the record straight denying it had any immediate plans. It was a couple of days after the initial reports and there are still a couple of sketchy details, but here's what happened. Kenichi Sugi DG Mobile's, a Digital Garage subsidiary, chief operating officer, gave a presentation at a tech conference where he laid out some of the details of the company's plans to start using paid subscriptions as a revenue model. The presentation got picked up by various media outlets and spread around the world.
Now Digital Garage is saying that the presentation wasn't an official announcement from the company, but rather some possible future plans for DG Mobile which don't directly involve either Twitter or Digital Garage.
“In response to media reports stating that Twitter Japan will be launching a paid-premium accounts service on Twitter, we would like to officially state that this is not correct. To be clear, Twitter service in Japan is a free service and neither Twitter Inc. nor Digital Garage, Inc. have discussed or have any plans for paid-premium accounts. Also to clarify, Twitter Inc. and DG enjoy a commercial partnership but do not have a joint-venture arrangement in Japan,” the company stated.
At first, it would seem that the company is now saying it wants nothing to do with the paid accounts, but what it's really saying is that the service itself will remain free, on the site and through the APIs. However, DG Mobile may very well launch a third-party service which would charge for receiving tweets on mobile devices.