Twitter Blue: Is It Really Worth It?
Starting in mid-2021, Twitter began rolling out its paid service, Twitter Blue, to several key markets. Canada and Australia served as the start-up countries, with users in the United States gaining access to the monthly subscription before the end of 2021.
As Twitter looks to finalise its ‘Blue’ launch worldwide in the coming months, set against the backdrop of a contentious ownership struggle, Uni4m Media looks to answer the ever-important question lingering on every Tweeter’s tongue… is Twitter Blue worth the $3 per month cost?
Disclaimer: As of April 21st, Twitter Blue is not available in the United Kingdom.
Cost
Depending on where you are in the world, the cost of Twitter Blue will vary slightly. In the US it costs $2.99, whereas a user elsewhere would pay $3.49 CAD or $4.49 AUD.
So yes, depending on currency value at the time, countries such as Australia may find subscribers paying more than those in America, who in turn end up paying slightly more than their cool Canadian cousins.
The Undo Button
Credit: Twitter
Let’s be honest, if Twitter is going to get us to part with our hard-earned $3 per month, the undo button is perhaps the biggest determiner in that decision. For years (and years) fans of the Bluebird app have begged former overlord Jack Dorsey for the ability to edit tweets. Now, Twitter may not be giving users the ability to edit their ramblings, but the undo function is certainly the next best thing.
So how does it work? Within the Twitter Blue settings – which can be accessed on Desktop and Mobile – subscribers have the functionality to optimise their usage. For example, Twitter allows users to set the undo timer to 5, 10, 20, 30 or 60 seconds. That’s how long you will have after posting to make any changes or cancel the tweet entirely. From our hands-on experience, we found 20 seconds to be more than enough to spot that pesky typo or incorrect emoji.
More options presented allow Twitter Blue subscribers to set undo parameters for all interactions, including original tweets, replies, threads, quotes, and polls.
Without a doubt, it’s a very nice feature to have - especially when you work in a creative agency like ours, it is helpful to have those extra 20 or so seconds to proof check if needed. Users can also skip the undo timer if they wish, which is efficient.
Top Articles
Twitter Blue makes it easier than ever before for users to engage with news and written web content. With the Top Articles tab, subscribers can see a highlight of the most shared articles in your network. You can customize the filter for this to show top articles from the last hour, or even further afield to the last 24 hours. It’s a handy tool that regular users of Reddit will be very familiar with when it comes to sorting content and helping to distinguish trending stories for your interest.
Perhaps, though, the best thing about Top Articles is the ability to read ad-free with Twitter Blue. Twitter has partnered with publications across the news spectrum (Insider, Vox, BuzzFeed, The Verge, Rolling Stone, Reuters, Washington Post, just to name a few) to give Blue subscribers the ability to read web content without being bombarded with advertisements.
What makes this even better is that every time you read an article from an ad-free partner, a portion of your subscription fee goes directly to the sites you read. In an age where news sites are struggling to generate revenue outside of annoying pop-ups and un-skippable videos ads, it helps to make content more accessible and digestible whilst giving back to the source. For clarity, however, the ‘portion’ of the fee which Twitter mentions going to the publication is not publicly disclosed, so the total impact of this feature remains a mystery to general users.
Labs
Every now and then you’ll see me or the Uni4m account posting about beta features on social media platforms. These are tools or add-ons that developers are testing with certain audiences to gather important insight and metrics before it can be rolled out fully.
Labs provides Twitter Blue subscribers with early access to new features – and more importantly, gives Twitter another subset audience to test on. Lab users are informed they can upload longer videos that are up to 10-minutes long as well as being able to upload in 1080p. Up until now, Twitter has capped its videos at 720p, which is insane to think considering most platforms now operate with 4K playback. But it’s a start, right?
Also included with labs is the option to upload an NFT profile picture (hooray, I guess?).
The Best of the Rest
Credit: Twitter
Outside of the big hitters mentioned above, there are a plethora of added features that come with being a Twitter Blue subscriber.
Here’s a rundown of some other things you can expect for the $3 price tag:
Reader view: a condensed newsfeed that allows long Twitter threads to be scrolled through seamlessly as if they were one piece of prose.
The ability to update text size for reader, making it larger or smaller.
Additional aesthetic updates, mainly for mobile, where users can customise Twitter’s colour scheme and select an alternative App Icon. There are even some seasonal options with this one, so make sure to check regularly.
Bookmarks and Bookmark folders. Are you an avid bookmarker-er on Twitter (not quite sure which demographic we’re preaching to here)? Are you tired of having all your bookmarks carelessly unorganized? Well, have no fear. Now you can create various bookmarky folders for your collection of bookmarks, to massively improve your bookmarking experience.
The Verdict
With all that in mind, especially for you lazy buggers who’ve scrolled to the end, it’s time for the verdict.
Is Twitter Blue worth the price tag?
TL; DR – no.
The more complex answer, maybe one day – but not yet. For the most part, Twitter Blue feels like the platform putting lipstick on a pig. Yes, there are some nice features. The undo button is cool, it’s just not the edit function we’re all so desperate for. Ad-free articles are nice if you spend a lot of time using the platform to catch up on news – but outside of that, everything else feels like it’s just for show.
I have a fundamental problem with a platform inexplicably charging customers for features that others give for free. Theme changes, bookmarks, uploading videos in full HD – all things which are pretty much commonplace in other parts of social media.
If anything, Twitter Blue personifies the identity crisis the platform has been undergoing the last few years – a battle between founder and board which saw the platform’s own visionary step away. This emphasis on making Twitter more financially viable, in the age of Meta’s commercial domination, has caused huge divides behind the scenes, and Twitter Blue feels like a bastard child of the company’s internal chaos.
Instead of giving value to its users (around 19.05 million as of Feb. 2022), it seems more like Twitter searching desperately for ways to give the social media platform an overtly-commercial future.
Whereas Meta has found a very successful marketplace for advertising, making $31.43 billion in revenue in 2020. Twitter has just never had the same appeal to advertisers.
Ultimately, social media has always been founded upon two core principles, being free and accessible. Twitter Blue comprises both. But maybe Elon Musk will have a different vision for the platform…