Twitter will roll out a new “higher priced” Blue subscription option that doesn’t show any ads on the platform, according to CEO Elon Musk. Twitter Blue currently costs $8 per month, which is yet to follow through on its promise of showing 50 percent fewer ads than non-verified Twitter users. Internally, Twitter Blue is not as successful as the company hoped, which is probably why the new option is being built.
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Not only did Twitter Blue not make up the losses incurred from lowered ad revenue, the decline in marketing partners has not subsided and Twitter’s ad revenue is now 40 percent lower than before Musk bought the company. In addition to the new tier, Musk says Twitter’s also working on a way to decrease the frequency and size of ads on Twitter, which he’s hinted at in the past.
Of course, we have no idea how much more expensive the new Twitter Blue subscription tier is going to be. Unfortunately, Twitter no longer has a communications team that could be asked about it, since they were all let go. In fact, Twitter is now functioning with only 20 percent of the employees it had when Musk took over, both from large swathes of retrenchments and natural attrition.
It is also unclear if the more expensive Twitter Blue tier will have any other perks over and above the current subscription other than being ad-free. The existing Blue subscription comes with perks like a blue ‘verified’ checkmark, the ability to undo tweets, a way to upload longer 1080p videos, a reader mode for threads, and prioritized ranking in conversations.
Twitter already has a $3 premium on Blue subscriptions when sign-up is through the iOS or Android app to counteract the commission that the Apple and Google app stores takes on any purchases. We assume there will be a similar premium on the more expensive tier.
