Twitter Japan Introducing Premium Service in January [Updated]

UPDATE: You can take everything we’ve written in this post and forget it. Please see the updated post on this matter.

Apparently, Twitter Japan will start introducing paid premium accounts beginning in January next year. It’s no secret that the Japanese branch of Twitter has always been a bit of a rebel compared to its few other counterparts. I mean, it’s the only subsidiary to have launched different services, including Twitvideo. Twitter Japan is also the only Twitter service to run ads.

Anyway, there aren’t too many details about the premium service said to start in January. According to Japanese IT Media [rough Google Translation], by introducing the premium service, Twitter aims to charge users just to view tweets from those with premium accounts. The fees will vary from 100 Yen  or U$1.15 to 1,000 Yen or about US$11.5 a month. User will be able to pay those fees using credit cards, using a pre-paid ticket, or by asking their mobile carrier to add the charges to the monthly bill.

There have been rumors for a while now about Twitter rolling out premium accounts. It’s nice to see that it’s finally starting to test such services. We doubt the system will be introduced to the other Twitter branches any time soon though. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Two screenshots of the premium service after the break.

[ TechCrunch ]