On February 8, Twitter expanded its paid membership service Twitter Blue to India, Brazil, and Indonesia as the Elon Musk-owned social media company stepped up its efforts to monetize the platform. Currently, the service costs Rs 650 per month for use on the web and Rs 900 per month for use on mobile devices. Twitter additionally provides a discounted annual plan for Rs 6,800, or Rs 566.67, every year.
Apple and Google charge a commission fee of between 15% and 30% on subscriptions, although this is expected to be offset by the higher subscription rate for iOS and Android devices.
Since its relaunch in December 2022, Twitter Blue is now accessible in 15 markets, including the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia among others. Users of the updated Twitter Blue subscription receive a verified Blue checkmark in addition to a number of extra features, such as the ability to edit tweets, upload longer videos on the web that can last up to 60 minutes (2GB in size), organise bookmarks, change the app icon, add NFT profile pictures, and gain early access to new features.
On February 8, Twitter began enabling lengthy tweets of up to 4,000 characters for Twitter Blue subscribers in the US. These tweets will have a character limit of 280 and a “display more” prompt.
According to the company, Twitter Blue subscribers will soon experience 50% less advertisements in their home timeline and have their tweets prioritised in conversations and search results.
Elon Musk also disclosed on February 3 that, as long as creators are Twitter Blue users, Twitter will share ad revenue with them for advertising that run in their comment threads. He hasn’t provided any further details, though.
Musk confronts a formidable hurdle in trying to revive the indebted company by boosting its income. Additionally, it coincides with a persistent slowdown in the online advertising industry brought on by the global economic slump, which has had a significant negative influence on the revenue development of internet businesses dependent on advertising like Twitter, Meta, Alphabet, and Snap. One of the company’s main endeavours to expand its revenue sources outside advertising is Twitter Blue. Musk had stated to staff in November 2022 that he wanted to reduce the social media company’s dependency on advertising by having at least half of the company’s revenue come from subscriptions. In a live Twitter Spaces session in December 2022, Musk defended his severe cost-cutting initiatives and claimed that Twitter was on schedule to make roughly $3 billion in 2023.
However, the service has not gotten off to a strong start. According to The Information, less than 0.2% of Twitter’s monthly active users in the US paid for a subscription as of mid-January, which amounted to only 180,000 people.
It was observed that this would translate to 290,000 global subscribers and about $28 million in annual income, or less than 1% of the $3 billion that Twitter expects to earn this year.
we’re baaaack! Twitter Blue is now available for $8/month on web or $11/month on iOS – we’ve made some upgrades and improvements 🧵 pic.twitter.com/uRMuwCSElb
— Premium (@premium) December 12, 2022
