Will we soon have to pay to tweet? We are far from it, but the social network with the blue bird is doing everything to encourage its users to subscribe to Twitter Blue, the paid formula set up by Elon Musk shortly after his arrival at the head of the company. (9.60 euros per month or 100.8 euros once over a year). Latest example: the possibility of publishing tweets of up to 4,000 characters instead of 280, launched in the United States on Wednesday.
“Twitter was ultra-dependent on an almost unique form of income: advertising. Its goal is to depend less on it and better monetize its users, especially the most active ones,” points out Julien Pillot, professor of digital economics and strategy at the INSEEC business school. Here’s how he does it, knowing that some of these features are not accessible (for the moment) only on the mobile app.
Edit a Tweet and post longer videos
Misspelling, lack of meaning… Every Twitter user has regretted, at least once, having pressed the “Tweet” button without re-reading once more. Those who subscribe to Blue can edit their tweet up to five times within 30 minutes of posting it. But beware: there are limits. In a thread, a series of several messages, only the first can be edited, for example.
Exceed 280 characters
Frustrated with having to shrink a paragraph to fit within the 280 character limit (including spaces) ? In the United States, subscribers to Twitter Blue can therefore now go up to 4,000 characters, Twitter announced on Wednesday. In order not to force Internet users to “scroll”, only the first 280 characters are displayed in the feed. Click on “see more” to view the rest. This functionality should soon be available elsewhere in the world, particularly in France.
“As a user, I wonder about the interest of doing but also reading tweets in 4000 characters. For that, I rather go to other networks or to news sites, ”reacts Julien Pillot.
In addition, instead of the maximum 2 minutes 20, Twitter Blue allows you to post videos of up to 10 minutes and a size of 2 GB.
More anecdotal options
Twitter Blue also allows you to obtain the little blue badge, to store your bookmarks (tweets that we put aside to find them easily) in different folders, to change the color of the Twitter application icon on a smartphone or even to use an NFT, a kind of image referring to a cryptocurrency wallet, as a profile picture. Not enough, a priori, to justify paying nearly 10 euros per month. “To say that you have to pay to have access to certain new functionalities can work, but on condition that they are sufficiently attractive”, insists Julien Pillot.
Later, less advertising and increased visibility
Twitter promises that messages posted by subscribers to the Blue formula will soon be prioritized, meaning they will appear at the top of replies to another message, mentions and search results. These users will also have half as much publicity as currently.
Soon reserved access to Tweetdeck?
Acquired by Twitter in 2011, Tweetdeck is an interface made up of several columns that allows you to follow, without having to update anything, several feeds (the “classic” timeline, a personalized list, its notifications, etc.). A specialist engineer discovered a small line in the source code stating “Welcome to TweetDeck, a feature on Twitter Blue” (“welcome to TweetDeck, a service of Twitter Blue”).
What suggest that access to this tool would soon be reserved for paying subscribers. The company has not commented on, much less confirmed such an intention.