Twitter Blue, a subscription version of the popular microblogging service with extra features, has expanded to the US and other countries. So what is Twitter Blue, what perks does it provide in exchange for subscribing to it and should you pull the trigger?
HIGHLIGHTS
- The Twitter Blue subscription offering is now available in the US and New Zealand
- It comes with such perks as revoking tweets, reading ad-free articles and more
- Do you want those features so badly that you’re willing to pay to use them?
Twitter Blue: Pay to revoke tweets and read ad-free articles
Following a limited rollout in June 2021 in Canada and Australia, Twitter Blue is now available to folks in the United States and New Zealand on iOS, Android and the web.
Twitter Blue costs $2.99 per month in the US or an equivalent price in other countries.
Billed as Twitter’s first-ever subscription offering, Blue offers up additional features non-paying users cannot access but really should be able to considering these are some pretty common features that other social networks don’t hide behind paywalls.
It starts with the ability to undo a sent tweet, which has consistently been among the top feature requests. Now when you make a typo in your tweet or want to correct wrong information, you can recall it for a limited time before it’s sent. Twitter Blue also includes the ability to customize the tabs in the Twitter app by choosing six shortcuts to common features like your profile page, bookmarks, spaces, messages, communities and so forth.
Then there’s ad-free reading, which may be the only Twitter Blue feature worth paying for. If you subscribe to Twitter Blue, you can read ad-free articles on participating websites, with a portion of your subscription passed directly to the publishers you read most. More than 300 US-based publications are participating in this initiative at launch.
For those wondering, your main Twitter feed remains interspersed with ads even for the time being, if you have Blue. “We are not currently considering a Twitter ads-free product,” Twitter senior director of product Sara Beykpour said in a briefing.
Twitter Blue includes another extra feature, dubbed Top Articles Newspaper, that offers a Nuzzel-like place within the Twitter app to catch up on the news your network’s been talking about the last 24 hours. It includes a roundup of the most-shared articles from the accounts you follow. Read: Tips for efficient searching on Twitter
If you don’t care about reading articles or revoking tweets, maybe you’re dying to play with other upcoming features but lack the skills to find Twitter’s hidden features? “With Labs Microscope, you’ll get access to what we’re testing before anyone else,” the company notes. Currently, Labs Microscope spotlights a Pinned Conversations feature that lets you pin a chat to the top spot in your Direct Messages inbox.
For further information about Blue, read Twitter’s support article.
Should I subscribe to Twitter Blue?
It all depends on what you expect from a social networking platform like Twitter. If all you do on Twitter is get your news in real-time, post a few thoughts and respond to other people’s tweets, then you probably won’t justify paying for the subscription. On the other hand, you’ll extract value from Twitter Blue in case you cannot live with features like revoking tweets, customizing the toolbar in Twitter for iOS or conversation pinning.
At any rate, you can’t blame Twitter for wanting to monetize its platform. The question is, do you want any of the aforementioned features so badly that you’re willing to pay to use them? That’s what Twitter is betting on without compelling you to upgrade to Blue.
Some feedback: This is stuff you WANT us to want, but which we don’t actually want, mixed in with improvements that should be available to everyone.
— Chris Maytag (@cpm5280) November 9, 2021
It’s disappointing to see Twitter resort to shady tactics in order to upsell people to the subscription, like putting what should really be regular features behind a paywall. For what it’s worth, the company has publicly pledged to never get rid of the free version of Twitter, so there’s that!