Last week, Twitter rolled out its Twitter Blue premium subscription service in the United States. The price is $3 a month, and you can get additional features like an undo button and news article without ads.
For the time being, Twitter Blue is only available in a rather restricted number of extra capabilities intended for those that use the service the most. But does Twitter Blue worth $3? While the features are generally useful, it’s disappointing that they don’t all operate in the same way across Twitter’s app and website. Let’s discuss!
Should I pay $3 a month to Twitter Blue?
Undo button
The “undo” button has been the most discussed feature among all Twitter Blue features. There’s no way to directly edit tweets on Twitter, so this is probably the closest thing we can get. If you are one of those people who regret right after tweeting something this feature might be worth buying the subscription. However, it might also be confusing because it doesn’t always work as you anticipate.
On Twitter’s mobile app, you can undo almost any type of tweet with the new button such as standard tweets, replies, threads, quote tweets and polls. But it doesn’t work in the same way on the web version, it only works with standard tweets and replies.
There’s also the fact that undoing a tweet requires multiple steps. In Twitter’s app, after you hit the tweet button, you’ll be prompted with an undo button and you have the possibility to check your tweet during that time. But in the web version, after tweeting, you have to hit view tweet first and click on the undo button then.
“View tweet” isn’t always available though, and the only way to access the “undo” button is to go to your profile and search for the pending tweet on your timeline. It’s kinda confusing, isn’t it?
Bookmarks and reader mode
The most underappreciated feature of Twitter Blue might be the reader mode. Because this mode really makes it easier to read long threads. There were third-party solutions for these situations, but having a native tool for reading those long threads is actually great.
It’s even better when combined with another new Twitter Blue feature called bookmark folders. Now, you can add those long tweet threads to a specific folder and read them later. The most annoying thing here is, bookmark folders are only available in Twitter’s mobile application.
Ad-free news articles
The top articles feature, to be honest, might be the most useful tool of Twitter Blue. It will show you the most popular news articles among your Twitter follow list, over the last 24 hours. This feature works just like Nuzzel, for those who don’t remember, Nuzzel was an indie project but then acquired by Twitter. The platform abandoned it after it partnered up with Scroll.
The acquisition of Scroll by Twitter also has a huge role in Twitter Blue’s ability to create ad-free news articles. In an effort to provide ad-free browsing in exchange for a portion of subscription payments, Scrolls offered partnerships with hundreds of news organizations. Blue subscribers may now see how much of their surfing has been directed to those publishers via Twitter.
Early access and customization tools
In recent years, Twitter has been much more public with the features it tests. The firm had a separate beta version to test new modifications. However, Twitter Blue’s “labs” functionality is similar to the platform’s former beta version. Before deciding whether they should be made available to more people, Twitter plans to offer some experimental features first to Twitter Blue users.
Finally, Twitter Blue lets you customize the appearance and feel of the Twitter app to a small degree. Users can change the app icon or use a different color theme. Most importantly, there is the ability to customize and arrange the navigation bar which is located at the bottom part.
Is it worth it?
We’ve discussed the features offered by Twitter Blue, if you are a professional or intense Twitter user, you can consider buying the subscription package. To me, personally, even if it has some problems, $3 is not a big deal for extra features. If you are just a casual user, it might not be necessary after all.
