Twitter may have just (re)launched its Blue subscription service on Android but there’s more in store for those willing to give Uncle Elon money. Specifically, a more expensive version of the already eleven-dollary (R190/m) service.
You’ll get what you’re paying (a substantial chunk of money) for. The purpose of the upcoming tier is to remove advertising from the service entirely.
Twitter wants you feeling Blue
Also, there will be a higher priced subscription that allows zero ads
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2023
Paying for access to the micro-blogging service, weirdly enough, doesn’t remove all the ads from the platform. Only about 50% of the ads you’d typically see are shown. This is an improvement but Elon Musk reckons that’s still too many. According to Musk, ads are ” too frequent on Twitter and too big”.
The plan, if it can be called that, is to offer users a more expensive version of Blue that lets them opt out of advertising on the platform entirely. As with most new features, there doesn’t appear to be a timeline or an idea of the final cost involved. You can be reasonably certain that it’ll be cheaper to use Twitter Blue on desktop than on mobile devices, what with the 30% platform tax markup.
This could justify (a little) all of the third-party Twitter apps that were hoofed off the company’s API last week. Those apps all provided an ad-free experience without sending much revenue in the mothership’s direction. Bringing that experience in-house could prove profitable. Maybe. Guess we’ll see.