Twitter Blue Rolls Out Cheaper Annual Subscription
Twitter is dropping the price of its premium subscription service, Twitter Blue, but there’s a catch. Users who want the lower price will have to stump up for an annual subscription. Twitter Blue has been central to Elon Musk’s plans to increase monetization on the social media platform and turn the struggling company into something profitable. Blue was around long before Musk but wasn’t that popular. Its first desirable feature was arguably the ability to edit tweets, which it gained shortly before Musk took over. However, the South African billionaire hassaid this feature won’t be exclusive to Twitter Bluein the future and is instead focusing on a different set of perks.
The main perk that comes with Twitter Blue is “verification.” Accounts subscribing to the service will get a blue checkmark that is almost identical to the one Twitter has been attaching to the accounts of notable individuals, entities, and companies, for several years. It’s this feature that madethe launch of the new Twitter Blue so problematic. Trolls seized on the opportunity to imitate notable accounts, which led to potentially embarrassing tweets from bad actors pretending to be a major pharmaceutical company, former president George W. Bush, or current president Joe Biden. Signups for the service were suspended, and Musk went back to the drawing board. Several rule changes were made, and verification now requires accounts to be of a certain age, but Blue is now back and there’s a chance you can get it for less than $8 per month.
