Will you pay to use some special features on Twitter? The social networking service appears to be working on something called ‘Twitter Blue’, according to an independent researcher who has discovered a set of unreleased features on the app.
Jane Manchun Wong, who often gets her predictions right, has shared some screenshots of the service, which may get pegged at $2.99 a month. Though companies like Twitter usually don’t confirm or comment on predictions, there are some hints at something new coming our way.
Earlier this month, the company picked up Scroll, a subscription service that removes ads from websites that participate. Tony Haile, the former CEO of Scroll who is now on the product team at Twitter, had tweeted about his company getting acquired and that Scroll would “integrate into a broader Twitter subscription later in the year”. So this can also suggest that a premium, ad-free Twitter experience is a possibility. In fact, long-term users on the platform have been asking for editable tweets as well as an undo feature, like on Gmail, which allows users to prevent a tweet from being sent for a few seconds after posting.
Lately, Twitter has been adding a number of good options, like Spaces (an audio feature) and a new way to display images without cropping. Now, images look just like they did when you shot them.
At the same time, one also needs to remember that after Apple rolled out its “app tracking transparency” feature, advertising on websites is under attack. iPhones and iPads require apps to secure consent from users before following their activities across multiple apps. So, new streams of revenue are always welcome.