Internet information technology news service iT Home announced plans yesterday to transform itself into a subscription-based online daily beginning April 23.
"Internet users today are more likely to use services that require them to pay," Jan Hung-tze (詹宏志), CEO of PC Home Group (網路家庭) which owns the venture, said yesterday.
Interest in the post dotcom crash trend -- paid for Web information -- was extensive, with Jan speaking to a packed house of some 200-plus media and industry professionals at the company's press conference yesterday.
The news comes nearly two months after Jan announced the closure of Taiwan's first, free-for-charge, online daily paper, the Tomorrow Times (
But Jan stressed that he remains confident that the Internet is still the future of businesses, adding that the addition of a paid mechanism into existing Internet services should be one of the strategies to help Internet ventures survive.
Jan predicted that paid Internet services would be an unavoidable wave of the future.
Actually, PC Home Online has since March launched four new subscription-based online services and garnered around 6,000 subscribers in one month, with a revenue of NT$2 million.
To maintain a steady source of revenue from its online news, apart from Internet advertising, Jan said PC Home Online is planning to launch another 11 paid services before June.
Ho Chi-yu (何琦瑜), editor-in-chief of iT Home, said she expects the new paid service to attract 38,000 new subscribers, which account for roughly 10 percent of the online daily's current subscription base.
An NT$1,000 membership fee will be charged for a one-year subscription to iT Home.
In line with the paid Internet service trend, the United Daily News (
Joining the trend, cnYES.com (
"[It] indicates the coming of an era that information is not free of charge -- users will have to pay for what they get," Deyou said.
On the Net:
iT Home: www.ithome.com.tw
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