Twitter now offers Blue subscribers a 50% reduction in ads compared to non-paying users. The social media platform’s CEO, Elon Musk, announced the feature on Thursday, as part of his attempts to monetize Twitter’s blue check mark. For $8 a month, US-based Blue subscribers will experience fewer sponsored tweets on their “Following” and “For You” timelines. However, the new feature will not apply to ads shown on user profiles, in replies, on promoted accounts and trends, or on promoted events on the Explore page. Moreover, the half-ads feature will only kick in after a subscriber’s profile has received verification.
While Musk may see the new feature as a potential source of revenue, Twitter Blue has not been performing as well as he had hoped. At the start of the year, only 180,000 people in the US were paying for Blue subscriptions, which is less than 0.2% of monthly active users. With almost 300,000 subscribers worldwide, the company will only make around $28 million from subscription services in 2023, which is a small portion of Musk’s desired yearly revenue of $3 billion.
In a bid to increase revenue and attract more companies to Twitter, Musk has begun forcing already-verified businesses and profiles to pay $1,000 a month to obtain gold check marks. However, many media organizations, such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, POLITICO, BuzzFeed, and Vox, have refused to pay. Even the White House will not be paying staffers for verified accounts, according to Axios. Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has also stated that he will not be paying.
In addition to the new ad-related feature, Twitter has also prioritized Blue subscribers’ tweet rankings in conversations and search. The support page for the Blue subscription states that if a paid user interacts with a tweet, they will receive a “small boost in their ranking.” However, with less than 1% of Twitter’s monthly users having subscribed since the company rolled out the Blue subscription plan globally, according to data from Israeli analytics company Similarweb, the platform’s attempts to monetize the blue check mark have not been as successful as Musk had hoped.
