Will You Pay to Use Social Media? Twitter Launches Twitter Blue, its First Subscription Service

Social media companies mostly make their money from adverts. However, Twitter wants to change the game by launching a subscription service, and it is targeting over 300 million users over the coming years.

Twitter launches Twitter Blue

Leading social media company Twitter has launched Twitter Blue, its first subscription service. The company announced earlier today that the service is designed for power users willing to pay a monthly fee to gain access to exclusive features.

According to the company, the service is currently available to users in Canada and Australia. Twitter charges $3.49 (Canada) and $4.49 (Australia) in local currencies per month. However, it didn’t reveal when the service would be available to US users.

Per the announcement, the Twitter Blue service will come with an Undo Tweet feature, allowing users to set a customizable timer of up to 30 seconds to reverse a tweet if the user needs to fix it before tweeting again. Although users requested an edit feature, the Undo Tweet feature works differently. The feature allows subscribers to preview the nature of their tweets and adjust them before publishing.

Twitter added that the service contains other features such as a reader mode, bookmark folders, customize the Twitter app icons on mobile phones, dedicated customer support, and access to color themes for the app.

The company’s stock price went up by 1.3% during the pre-market trading session. The rally has continued, as investors positively welcomed this latest development.

Will users pay to use social media?

At the start of the year, Twitter set the goal of reaching 315 million monetizable daily active users before the end of 2023. It also wants to double its annual revenue to $7.5 billion by that time as Twitter makes generates of its money via advertising.

Traditionally, social media companies like Twitter and Facebook make most of their money from advertising. In fact, advertising currently makes up 86% of Twitter’s revenue. However, the social media company is looking to diversify its revenue source.

A large percentage of the people who use social media platforms use them for free. Hence, the idea of paying to enjoy special features such as the Undo Tweet might take a while for users to catch on to. The market is still new, and it might take a while before people decide if they will pay for social media services or not.