The New Twitter Blue Subscription Program

For the past few months, people have been speculating that Twitter will be releasing a new subscription service for Twitter users everywhere. This week, the new service, Twitter Blue, was launched in Australia and Canada for a monthly fee of roughly $3. While it is currently a service limited only to the two locations mentioned above, it will be made available in other regions in the near future. As of writing, Twitter Blue currently includes highly requested features such as an undo-send tool, color themes, and bookmarks allowing you to organize and bookmark various tweets. According to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter Blue was most likely announced in response to Apple's new tracking transparency policy. This new policy allows users to allow or block apps from tracking activity. Since more people will choose to end tracking, Twitter is no longer able to display personalized ads which made up over 80% of Twitter’s total revenue in the first quarter of 2021. However, despite the new developments, some skeptics are not exactly sure if a paid version of the platform will be enough to reroute the company onto the right track. Chris Messina, a product designer and technologist who invented the hashtag in 2007, is on the fence with the idea of Twitter Blue. “If I can make money from Twitter, like I do with Medium’s Partner Program, then I could imagine joining Blue,” he says. “I don’t personally find the current offerings worth the price of admission.”