Microblogging platform Twitter has rolled out its Blue subscription to more than 20 new countries in Europe.
The new countries which Twitter users can now subscribe to the blue subscription, include Greece, Sweden, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Cyprus, Denmark, Bulgaria, Austria, Latvia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, and the Netherlands.
Twitter Blue’s recent expansion will see the feature available in more than 35 countries across the world. The subscription will give subscribers access to a handful of perks on the Twitter platform for a fee of $8 per month.
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Some of these perks include, a reduction in the number of ads, a blue verification checkmark, the ability to post videos up to 60 minutes long, longer Tweets of up to 4,000 characters, early access to Twitter Blue Labs features ( Twitter is working on but hasn’t officially released yet), and several others. However, the reduced ads component isn’t live yet and Twitter hasn’t offered a firm timeline for when that will change.
The feature is optional and users certainly don’t need it to enjoy Twitter, however it is a paid add-on that can enhance a user’s experience. Twitter reserves the right without notice to remove a user’s blue checkmark at any time in its sole discretion without offering a refund, including if such user violated the company’s Terms of Service or if a user account is suspended.
Twitter Blue has been buffeted by a myriad of changes since Elon Musk took over as the company’s CEO in October 2022. The subscription was initially launched in 2021, offering ad-free articles for $2.99 a month. However, Musk raised the cost to $8 a month and granted subscribers a blue checkmark.
Meanwhile, the feature was quickly disabled after users were able to impersonate official accounts. The subscription has since been relaunched to offer a collection of features that free users won’t have access to on Twitter.
Instead of just the regular Blue checkmark, the platform introduced multi-coloured checkmarks (Blue, Yellow, Grey) to indicate different things. The Blue verification badges are those that verify the authenticity of accounts.The yellow or gold badge is used to verify official company or media accounts on Twitter.
The grey checkmark according to Twitter is a way to certify certain profiles, such as government, political party, media and brand accounts. Twitter also says it applies to “certain other public figures” without any specifics.
It would be recalled that Musk has been clear in the months leading up to his acquisition that he wanted to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. He is currently keen on growing subscriptions to become half of the company’s overall revenue.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has many investors in his other company called Tesla. Watch out, Twitter may return to the market soon.
Individual investors still can’t get enough of Tesla. So far this year, they’ve poured $13.6 billion into its shares, zooming toward the record sum of almost $17 billion splurged in 2022: The EV maker is the hottest share around, followed by Apple and Amazon. The fact that Tesla’s investor day on Thursday produced little news didn’t deter fans from buying the dip that followed, either. Still, rising interest rates and doubts about the company’s strategy have set a lower floor for shares — as of Friday, Tesla stock remained about 50% lower than their November 2021 peak of $409.97.
CEO Elon Musk touted the heat-pump technology that Tesla uses in its cars during investor day, saying he was “extremely excited” to build a home HVAC system based on it. (LinkedIn News)