The IT Nerd

Over the weekend Twitter announced that it was relaunching Twitter Blue. Via a Tweet of course:

• The cost is $8 a month on the web and $11 a month through its iOS app. The higher price on iOS helps to offset the 15% to 30% cut that Apple receives from subscriptions paid through the App Store. It will be interesting to see if Apple retaliates in regards to that.
• You get a blue checkmark.
• Subscribers will receive a blue checkmark next to their name, but only after they verify their phone number and their account has been reviewed. Let’s see if that stops the stuff that happened the last time Elon and company tried to launch Twitter Blue. Though to be fair, the company did say that subscribers who change their username, display name, or profile photo will temporarily lose the blue checkmark until their account is reviewed again.
• The ability to edit tweets
• The ability to upload higher-resolution 1080p videos
• A reader Mode for easily reading tweet threads
• Subscribers will “eventually” see 50% fewer ads than non-subscribers, gain the ability to post longer videos, have prioritized tweets in the replies section, mentions, and search, and get early access to other new features over time. All of these perks are listed as “coming soon.”

For what it’s worth, Twitter also announced that it will begin replacing the “Official” label for brands and other notable accounts with a gold checkmark for businesses, while a gray checkmark for government and multilateral accounts will begin rolling out later in the week.

So I have to ask, would you sign up for Twitter Blue? Full disclosure: I’m not going to. And I have to wonder how much traction that this will gain as I don’t think it’s going to be enough to hit the revenue target that Elon has in mind.

This entry was posted on December 12, 2022 at 8:48 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.