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A screenshot of the pay-for-view function test. [Photo/Sina Weibo] |
In contrast to the public opinion, public account owners who actually write stuff applauded the change.
"It is fair enough to pay for valuable information that you read. Charging would push for higher quality information, and lift the overall standard of articles circulating on the app," said Qiao Mu, owner of several public accounts and professor of media and mass communication at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
In fact, the pay-for-view idea doesn't come all of a sudden.
Early in August, the WeChat team had suggested this move in public. Tencent CEO Ma Huateng also said in a 2014 speech that "rareness" leads to profit, and that content with personality, charisma and creativity should be rewarded in the Internet Economy.
WeChat followed Sina Weibo, which introduced the reward function for long articles in August, 2014, adding the same function last April, in addition to the "original" tag function that was in effect since last January. With the reward function, readers might reward the writer from 1 to 200 yuan by online payment tools. It is reported that 260,000 yuan in revenue was generated in the first three days itself.
Figures show that China is seeing a growing number of readers willing to pay for quality contents in the last couple of years.
According to a 2014 report issued by EnfoDesk, revenue generated from mobile reading reached 8.84 billion yuan in 2014, and active readers on mobile devices saw an annual increase of 20.9 percent, reaching 590 million by the end of the year. The report estimated that the total revenue of 2017 would reach 15 billion yuan.
