Don't pay for Twitter Blue every month – buy an annual subscription instead
You can save big on Elon Musk's harebrained scheme to monetize Twitter
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Twitter Blue discount
✋ If you’re planning to subscribe to Twitter Blue, don’t pay monthly
😮 You can save 12% on a web subscription by paying for 12 months upfront
🤯 And iOS users can save 36%
✅ You’ll need to get Twitter Blue if you want a checkmark
Twitter Blue’s stop-start rollout continues to chug along, but at least you can save some cash by opting for an annual subscription as opposed to paying monthly.
As spotted by The Verge, customers can now choose a discounted annual subscription for Twitter Blue that costs $84. That’s a saving of 12.5% or $12 a year on the standard $8-per-month plan
The annual subscription will be even more appealing to iOS users, who have to pay $11 a year for the same service.
The reason for the pricing disparity between a web and iOS subscription is due to Apple’s 30% tax on all App Store payments. Elon Musk is making the user pick up the slack, hence the price increase.
Musk made it clear users will need to subscribe to Twitter Blue if they want to be granted a verified check mark, see fewer ads, and benefit from Twitter’s algorithm.
Twitter Blue benefits also include bookmark folders which let you group and organize tweets to find them faster later, custom app icons that let you change how the Twitter app displays on your phone, new themes, a reader mode, an undo tweet option, longer video uploads, custom navigation settings and a top articles shortcut to the most shared articles in your network.
The rollout of Twitter Blue has been shaky, to say the least. It’s still only available in select countries and hasn’t made its way to Android devices yet. Only the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the UK can subscribe to Twitter Blue, which will make Elon Musk’s goal of raking in the big bucks harder to achieve.
Twitter’s support page makes it clear that subscribers will get access to all of Twitter Blue’s features immediately except the blue checkmark. Musk promised that Twitter employees will manually review all subscribed accounts after bad actors aped business accounts, officials, including Elon himself, and even caused some companies’ share prices to plummet.
Newly created Twitter accounts will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 90 days, either, which should prevent the sort of chaos that ensued when anyone could grab a blue checkmark for $8.
At least businesses are easier to recognize now. Twitter now highlights official accounts with a fancy new gold checkmark and a square profile picture. Employees who work for certain businesses can also get a mini icon in their profile that shows which organization they’re part of.
Twitter recently blocked third-party apps like Tweetbot from working on the platform with no explanation. Twitter’s API account recently tweeted a vague statement saying, “Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working.
The latest change to the platform sees Twitter view counts move to the right side of tweets, between the like and share icons. The update is rolling out now to all users.
