Months after launching the Twitter Blue subscription feature in Canada and Australia, Twitter has now launched the services for users in the United States and New Zealand. The features are being tested by the social media platform with Canadian and Australian users since June. Twitter charges USD 2.99 per month for users for the Blue feature. The feature is available for iOS, Android as well as web users. The subscription will provide users with a host of features like they can customize the Twitter app icon and undo a tweet. There is one additional feature of Twitter Blue – it will give you access to ad-free articles.
Users will be able to read articles from over 300 news websites that are based in the United States. The sites will include the likes of the Washington Post, Insider, and Rolling Stone. However, a spokesperson of the company said that Twitter Blue subscribers may not have access to paywalled articles on those news platforms. With the launch of Blue services, the microblogging site is looking to diversify its revenue streams. So far, 89 percent of the total revenue of Twitter has been coming from advertising. The social media company has already set a target of reaching 315 million monetizable daily active users. Twitter has set 2023 as the deadline to achieve this.
Explaining how Blue subscribers will have access to news content, Twitter said that it would be a portion of subscriptions to participating news sites. The important thing is that users will be able to watch how much money was paid to the news sites they visited. Tony Haile, senior director of product, said that their main goal is to make these websites earn 50 percent more than what they would get by showing ads to that person. “Twitter Blue services will not only enable a better internet for subscribers but also a better internet for journalism,” Haile said.
