Twitter, much like virtually every other major social media platform out there, is the kind of site that you can pretty much use for free. The main reason for people wanting to use social media in the first place is because it costs nothing at all, with these sites and platforms instead obtaining their revenue from selling ad space and the like. However, generating revenue through things like ads has started to become increasingly difficult given the modern landscape wherein the use of user data has started to become a highly controversial subject for anyone to end up broaching.
Hence, Twitter is trying to branch out and start generating revenue from other sources as well, however, it is important to note that a big part of this process involves trying to sell a premium version of the platform for a subscription fee, known as Twitter Blue. The fee would be around $3.5 per month, and in order to test the service out to users in Canada and Australia, Twitter gave certain users $10 in credit that they could put towards trying it and seeing what they think of it.
This concept of a premium version of an otherwise free service is not unheard of. YouTube was one of the first to start offering it, with the benefit being that you would not have to see any kinds of ads. This is similar to what Twitter is offering, but Twitter is also throwing a few other features into the mix with one of the most useful being the ability to undo a tweet.
It is pretty common for people to send a tweet only to realize that they have misspelled something or added a typo among other mistakes. Deleting a tweet is all well and good but it can take some time to copy the tweet so that you can paste it back and edit out the mistakes and in doing so a lot of people would end up seeing that tweet especially if you have a particularly large following. This feature allows you to undo the tweet at the push of a button, which is fairly useful although many have stated that it does not provide anything extremely unique that makes the cost of $3.5 per month worthwhile for you.
Another feature that you would get with Twitter Blue is the ability to separate your bookmarks into different folders. This is something that most people would really like because the bookmarks tab can get very cluttered over time and this can make it difficult to truly look through them. Users will also get to use something called Reader Mode which basically turns a thread of separate tweets into something that you can easily scroll through.
All of these features are pretty neat but the vast majority of users are not going to want to spend any amount of money on them. Twitter might have been better off adding these features to the free version of their site rather than putting them behind a pay wall because it is unlikely that most users would be willing to pay for them all in all.
Screenshots: Shruti Shekar / AndroidCentral
Read next: Twitter’s attempts to tighten security fall flat as Two Factor Authentication is not being adopted by users
Hence, Twitter is trying to branch out and start generating revenue from other sources as well, however, it is important to note that a big part of this process involves trying to sell a premium version of the platform for a subscription fee, known as Twitter Blue. The fee would be around $3.5 per month, and in order to test the service out to users in Canada and Australia, Twitter gave certain users $10 in credit that they could put towards trying it and seeing what they think of it.
This concept of a premium version of an otherwise free service is not unheard of. YouTube was one of the first to start offering it, with the benefit being that you would not have to see any kinds of ads. This is similar to what Twitter is offering, but Twitter is also throwing a few other features into the mix with one of the most useful being the ability to undo a tweet.
It is pretty common for people to send a tweet only to realize that they have misspelled something or added a typo among other mistakes. Deleting a tweet is all well and good but it can take some time to copy the tweet so that you can paste it back and edit out the mistakes and in doing so a lot of people would end up seeing that tweet especially if you have a particularly large following. This feature allows you to undo the tweet at the push of a button, which is fairly useful although many have stated that it does not provide anything extremely unique that makes the cost of $3.5 per month worthwhile for you.
Another feature that you would get with Twitter Blue is the ability to separate your bookmarks into different folders. This is something that most people would really like because the bookmarks tab can get very cluttered over time and this can make it difficult to truly look through them. Users will also get to use something called Reader Mode which basically turns a thread of separate tweets into something that you can easily scroll through.
Been trying Twitter Blue for a bit now and this read mode feature is kinda cool pic.twitter.com/6SHiexRbNZ
— Shruti Shekar (@shruti_shekar) July 9, 2021
All of these features are pretty neat but the vast majority of users are not going to want to spend any amount of money on them. Twitter might have been better off adding these features to the free version of their site rather than putting them behind a pay wall because it is unlikely that most users would be willing to pay for them all in all.
Screenshots: Shruti Shekar / AndroidCentral
Read next: Twitter’s attempts to tighten security fall flat as Two Factor Authentication is not being adopted by users
