After much speculation, pressure from investors, and a few feints from Twitter, the microblogging platform appears poised to roll out a subscription-based product called Blue that reportedly starts at $2.99 per month.
Twitter has made no public announcements about the new service. But, according to multiple news reports, a close Twitter follower named Jane Manchun Wong captured and shared screengrabs showing off some of the Blue features.
These features include having the ability to pause the posting of a tweet for a defined period of time in order to give the sender a chance to undo a tweet before it is published. This doesn’t appear to be an “edit tweet” feature, which some no doubt would value. Twitter has resisted this however for fear that tweets would be edited based on the reaction they get, thus making the replies seem out of context. This would give a user time to reconsider a tweet. Whereas now, users have no option but to delete an ill-considered or errant tweet.
The other element that appears to be included in Blue is a Collections feature that allows users to save and organize their favorite tweets. Given how quickly the Twitter timeline moves, it’s possible to see some value in this feature.
So is this worth $2.99 a month? It feels a bit thin to us. Even if $2.99 isn’t a lot of money, it is in the context of a given user’s universe of subscriptions. Do I want yet another small amount taken from my account each month, and for what? In fairness, we don’t know everything about Blue. There could be a lot more to it. And for all we know there may be pricing tiers with different feature sets.
Twitter is calling their upcoming Subscription Service “Twitter Blue”, priced at $2.99/month for now, including paid features like:
Undo Tweets: https://t.co/CrqnzIPcOH
Collections: https://t.co/qfFfAXHp1o pic.twitter.com/yyMStpCkpr
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 15, 2021
Feeling the Pressure?
Critics have long focused on Twitter’s failure to roll out new and innovative products fast enough. In response, Twitter has been making multiple moves to keep pace with its competitors and generate new revenue streams. Much of the activity has been focused on creating a platform for creators to monetize their Twitter audience.
For example, in February Twitter rolled out SuperFollowers, a feature that allows creators to charge followers for access to premium content. And in January, Twitter acquired the newsletter platform Revue. This was widely seen as a move designed to compete with creator platforms like Substack and Patreon. In our view, giving tools to help creators make money seems more promising than charging a micro-subscription for some small incremental features.
The recent acceleration of activity may well be an effort to reverse Twitter’s underperformed reputation among investors. As a case in point, compare how Twitter’s stock has performed this year versus two of its closest rivals, SNAP and Facebook. Year to date (`through May 18) Twitter’s share price is down 2.4%. SNAP and Facebook are up 7.6% and 15.2% respectively.
Twitter turned in what seems like a respectable Q1 result, growing ad revenues 30% of a currency-adjusted basis. Then you look at Facebook’s 46% ad growth in Q1 and the underachiever label seems to stick. For its part, Snap grew revenues 66% in Q1, though it doesn’t break out revenue by category.
Falling Ad Revenues Add Pressure for Twitter Subscription Play
What Does Scott Think?
As we’ve written in the past, one of Twitter’s harshest critics has been NYU professor, entrepreneur, podcaster, and Twitter investor Scott Galloway. One of ProfG’s most consistent mantras has been that Twitter should ditch the ad model and go subscription. So The Dog must have given Blue the thumbs up, right? Not exactly. His Pivot podcast co-host Kara Swisher asked Galloway for his raw, initial reaction to Blue on this week’s episode.
“I’m not even sure I’d pay three bucks for that because I don’t understand what it is,” said a clearly underwhelmed Galloway. “I still think they should move to a pay-per-follower count.”
What Galloway means is that Twitter should charge a tiered subscription fee based on the size of a member’s following. He would give away Twitter to non-profits and those with fewer than 10,000 followers, and then charged based on audience from there. The logic being that a large Twitter following has tangible value to the member that Twitter should monetize. This makes some sense given how a large following can be monetized in any number of ways.
To give just one example, book publishers are far more likely to give a publishing deal to an author with a large Twitter following. An equally talented author with a small following, or who isn’t even on Twitter, is far less likely to get a deal. The logic being that a user can leverage a large following to sell books. The same can be said for building audiences for podcasts, Substack newsletters, YouTube channels, and so on.
“And I think everyone would whine and say they won’t pay it,” Galloway predicts. “And then they would pay it.”
