Using Line can become too expensive for influencers in the new year
The closure of Line Idol, a social media channel tailored for influencers to connect directly with fans, can hit content creators with a bill of more than a million baht each.
This estimate was provided on Friday by Rawee Tawantharong, president of the Society for Online News Providers.
Social platform Line Thailand recently announced it was shutting down the Line Idol channel from December 31 and suggested that users switch to the paid service Line Official Account (Line OA) instead.
However, the free channel Voom is still available for influencers, bloggers, publishers, media or businesses looking for a free social-media channel to promote their content or products.
As for the Line OA channel, Rawee said influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers may end up having to shell out lots of money because they will have to pay for each promotional message they send out.
“These content creators pay between 5,000 and 10,000 baht per month to use Line Idol, but if they switch to Line OA, they will have to pay 0.04 for each message they send, which works out to 40,000 for 10 messages to 100,000 followers. At this rate, it can cost a million baht or more each month,” he said.
“I believe it’s time for Thailand to develop its own social-media platform, so content creators are not hit when foreign companies change their policies after making profits from data created by Thai people,” Rawee said.
The government and related agencies need to act fast as we are losing our ‘digital sovereignty’, he added.
