Twitter Blue: What It Really Means

Twitter announced a new paid version for piloting in Canada and Australia on June 3 that will offer select features for a subscription. Read the full details here. When social media companies start offering paid options and still subject users to ads, however, it’s the most compelling case for regulation, much like TV and radio. Here’s my take on what we might see from the #TwitterBlue pilot: 

To start with the $3.49 per month subscription is steep considering the features are thin and users are still subjected to ad content. 

For a social platform not really growing its user base compared to IG or TikTok, the features still do not address the basic changes longtime Twitter users have asked for:

?? Edit button

?? Verification made easy

?? Purging bots

All of these would greatly improve UX. None of the features make the Twittersphere safer or more conducive to a productive user experience as far as this first rollout is designed.

None of the features in Twitter Blue addresses the proliferation of bots and mis/disinformation that continue to plague the platform. So will Twitter loyalists stay on the free option or try Twitter Blue despite no improvement on UX? My guess is no, they won’t try it, or if they do, they will not continue to pay for more than a few months. 

While other platforms have embraced paying content creators (I talked about this in media segments last fall), Twitter Blue pushes back on this and charges users. When’s the last time something went viral on Twitter organically? TikTok now rules UGC (user generated content) followed closely by Instagram (Thank you, Reels. But even then so much content from TikTok is re-purposed on IG Stories) for the foreseeable future.

Will Twitter Blue users and their content be favoured (promoted visibility) by the algorithm? Imagine logging into your app and seeing the content of Twitter Blue users in your feed despite your not following them? And you must scroll to find the content you've curated for your feed and user experience? How could this type of move affect the UX? And lastly, do most Twitter users need these new features? I argue, no, they don’t. Bring on regulation.