CorpComms Magazine

Twitter users would not be willing to pay to use the micro-blogging service, according to the recent 2010 USC Annenberg Digital Future Study. While nearly half of Internet users questioned said they had used free micro-blogs, not a single respondent said they would pay to use sites such as Twitter.

'Such an extreme finding...underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,' said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Centre for the Digital Future at USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Over half (55 per cent) of respondents claimed they would rather see online advertisements than pay for content, although 70 per cent admitted to finding them 'annoying', according to the report - which in its tenth year is the longest running study of its kind.

Nearly one in five (18 per cent) of Internet users questioned said that they cancelled a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they could access the same or similar content on the Internet - down slightly from 22 per cent in 2008 but nevertheless significant for the print industry.

Nonetheless, concern was raised over respondents' lack of trust in online sources, even with regard to sites that they visit regularly, with 22 per cent claiming they believe that half or more than half the information on their most-visited sites is unreliable. According to the study, trust in online sources in general has been diminishing over recent years.

'Users must rely on the Internet more than ever before, yet at the same time this survey is identifying growing concern about reliability of the technology and user trust in it. Have we reached the point at which users are going into 'online overload?'' asks Cole.

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