Twitter launches Twitter Blue, a subscription service that adds new features

Twitter is one of the most popular social media sites in the world, but the company isn’t raking in a ton of money from its tens of millions of users because the service is free. A common refrain that you’ve probably heard before is that if the service is free, then you’re the product. While that’s oversimplifying things a bit, there’s no doubt that Twitter relies on its massive userbase to sell ads. With online ads becoming a less secure source of revenue, Twitter is launching Twitter Blue, the company’s first-ever paid subscription offering.

The subscription service was made official in a blog post published earlier today, though news of its announcement was leaked multiple times in the last few weeks. The service is rolling out first for users in Australia and Canada starting today, and it will include the following features:

• Undo Tweet: This feature will let you recall a pending tweet before it’s sent out. This will be useful if you spot an error — say, a typo — in a tweet that you just hit “send” on. Think of it as Twitter’s version of Gmail’s “undo send.” You can customize how long you have to undo sending the tweet, up to a maximum time of 30 seconds.
• Reader mode: This feature will make it easier to follow long tweet threads by decluttering the UI so you can focus on just the content.
• Bookmark Folders: This feature will let you organize the tweets you’ve saved into folders.
• Other perks: Customizable app icons, “fun” color themes, and dedicated subscription customer support, for now.

Twitter Blue costs $3.49 CAD/$4.49 AUD in Canada and Australia respectively. Twitter says it will continue to build out even more features and perks over time, and we can also expect the service to launch in other regions in the future.

Personally, I don’t think Twitter Blue is worth paying for right now. The undo tweet feature only saves a little bit of hassle over just deleting and reposting, though it could save some marketers from accidentally publishing something they weren’t supposed to. The built-in bookmark folders feature is neat but your web browser’s bookmarks feature can accomplish the same thing. Reader mode is nice, but there are already popular (and free) alternatives. What do you think of Twitter Blue?

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