People often comment about how amazing it is that Twitter is free, but for some, it isn’t – A few new capabilities were added to Twitter last year with the debut of Twitter Blue, which was available to anyone who were ready to pay $2.99 per month. According to Matt Navara, who reported on the price increase today, the program will now cost $4.99 per month in the US. That’s probably not going to break the bank for information junkies who choose to pay for a service that still contains adverts in their feed, but it could be enough to make them wonder if it’s really worth it.
The add-ons included in the Twitter Blue package range from extremely helpful (an undo tweet window to correct typos, a customizable navigation bar, a list of the Top Articles shared by people you follow, and ad-free access to articles on websites like The Verge) to trivial (the option to select from various app icons), to dubious (the ability to choose from different app icons) (NFT hexagon profile pics).
The Twitter Blue team claims in an email to users that the increased rate “helps us continue to create some of the features you’ve been asking for, improve upon the current ones you already enjoy and preserve our purpose of supporting journalism.”
Notably, it makes no mention of Elon Musk, despite the fact that the business recently attributed the decline in Q2 sales on him. In happier times, Musk allegedly broached the notion of an unidentified subscription service outside of Blue that he believed might ultimately draw more than 100 million customers. Musk is currently seeking to back out of his contract to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.
New members are already paying the increased amount; however, Twitter maintains that early adopters will continue to pay the lower rate until October and will have at least 30 days to terminate their subscriptions.
The Twitter Blue email promises a “more frictionless reading experience” in the pipeline, among other features planned to arrive in Twitter Blue Labs, to keep paying users interested. Also absent from the email is the explanation for why I might stay until at least October, if not longer: editable tweets. I’m interested to see if the function will be offered as a perk of Twitter Blue when it launches because it has already been announced and is undergoing testing. Under Parag Agrawal’s leadership, Twitter seems to have accelerated the speed of feature development.