Twitter Inc. is beginning the rollout of its new subscription offering, which will give users the ability to better organize bookmarks and correct mistakes in tweets shortly after finalizing them.
The new Twitter Blue subscription plans will be available in Canada and Australia to start as the social-media company experiments with ways to charge for enhanced features. Twitter
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Among the perks for Twitter Blue subscribers is the ability to create folders for bookmarked tweets so that users can group saved content into categories. The company will also offer a “reader” mode for long threads that turns the threads into simple text so that users can read through more “seamlessly.”
Many Twitter users have long clamored for the ability to edit tweets, but Twitter Blue doesn’t go quite that far with its premium features. The subscription service does offer a more mild way for users to correct their mistakes, giving them the option to activate an “undo” button on tweets for up to 30 seconds before the tweet is officially published. This function, which lets users quickly preview their messages and fix errors, is similar to what some services, like Alphabet Inc.’s
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Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to customize the Twitter app icon on their home screens and choose from different color themes for the app experience.
The subscription offering will cost C$3.49 ($2.88) or AUD$4.49 ($3.44) per month. Twitter said in its blog post that it will be “building out even more features and perks for our subscribers over time.”
The company recently announced plans to acquire Scroll, a company that lets people subscribe and gain the ability to read articles from a basket of news sources without advertisements. The deal is seen as another attempt to make subscriptions part of the Twitter business model.
“As a Twitter subscriber, picture getting access to premium features where you can easily read articles from your favorite news outlet or a writer’s newsletter from Revue, with a portion of your subscription going to the publishers and writers creating the content,” Twitter said in a May blog post discussing the Scroll deal.
Twitter hares were up nearly 2% in Thursday morning trading, while the S&P 500 index
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