Twitter Blue: Is it right for your Twitter account?

Is Twitter Blue right for your accounts?

After the volatility of Elon Musk’s early tenure settles (dare we say it), we take a look at whether Twitter Blue and Twitter Gold are worth activating.

What is Twitter Blue?

Twitter Blue is an opt-in, paid subscription that adds a blue checkmark to your account and offers early access to select features, which are discussed in more detail below.

An Annual Plan currently costs £7.00 GBP per month, or £84.00 GBP per year ($8/month or $84/year), otherwise it costs £8.00 GBP per month on a rolling basis.

What features does Twitter Blue come with?

There are a number of different features that Twitter Blue unlocks – some more relevant to our field than others (ahem… NFT Profile Pictures).

The Twitter Blue Checkmark

Perhaps the most obvious and well-known feature of any ‘official’ account belonging to a person, organisation, or business, is the blue checkmark.

For verified accounts pre-dating Twitter Blue, there will be no change seen to the profile upon subscription. The blue verification tick will remain on the profile as usual, as a sign that the account has been reviewed according to Twitter’s previous standards.

For accounts currently without a blue checkmark, a Twitter Blue subscription will provide you with one. 

Content Creation Benefits of Twitter Blue

Longer Tweets

• Blue Subscribers will be able to Tweet up to 4,000 characters, rather than having to adhere to the usual 280.
• Good for capturing more nuance and detail from pieces of work like report launches, which are difficult to distil into short snippets of text.
• Longer Tweets can be used in Quote Tweets and Replies.
• Only Blue Subscribers can create long Tweets, but everyone can read them.

Longer Videos

• Twitter Blue subscribers can upload videos up to ~60 minutes long up to 2GB file size (1080p) (web only).
• Animated content of any kind generally performs best on socials: this feature would help organisations with rich, qualitative content strategies.

Editable Tweets

• Does what it says on the tin!
• Twitter Blue gives you a 30 minute window to make a limited number of changes to published Tweets. 
• Use it to make updates, tag someone, or reorder the attached media. 
• Edit Tweet currently only applies to original Tweets and quote Tweets.
• A use-case for fast-moving reactive content posting moments.

Undo Tweet

• Undo Tweet gives you the option to retract a Tweet after you send it, but before it’s visible to others on Twitter. 
• It’s not an edit button, but a chance to preview and revise your Tweet before it’s posted for everyone to see.
• Once the Undo period is over, the Tweet is viewable to your followers and you can either leave it or delete it, like you normally would on Twitter.
• Useful for posts which contain multiple visual assets, for instance, as you can rearrange them before the tweet goes live to ensure they’re showing as intended.

Community Management Benefits of Twitter Blue

Top Articles

• Gives Twitter Blue subscribers a shortcut to the most-shared articles in their network. This feature automatically lists the most-shared articles from people you follow—and people they follow, too.
• Good for spotting trending and popularly received pieces, which may be useful for tracking audience sentiment, or being more proactive in ‘influencer’ outreach.

Prioritised rankings in conversations

• This feature prioritises replies made by Twitter Blue subscribers on Tweets that they interact with.
• Incentivises engaging with other relevant accounts, as it could heighten reach among highly relevant audiences.

Bookmark Folders

• Bookmark Folders let Twitter Blue subscribers group and organise Bookmarked Tweets into folders for faster discovery later. 
• Twitter Blue allows you an unlimited number of bookmarks and Bookmark Folders which are always private.
• Potential use-case for social listening, particularly reactive, emerging, evolving stories which need to be watched closely.
• Could create bookmarks of tweets to be engaged with, as a way of holding teams accountable for being more proactive with using Twitter as the influencer outreach / conversation tool that it is.

Other features of Twitter Blue

• Other features include custom app icons and themes to make the experience of Twitter more aesthetically tailored to individual tastes. 
• This has no bearing on whether Twitter Blue is a viable or worthwhile tool to be explored by clients.

Twitter Blue Labs

Twitter Blue Subscribers also get early access to Twitter Blue Labs, which offers new features being tested before they’re available to everyone else.

This would keep subscribers afloat of latest developments, and could form an interesting part of test and learn approaches in ongoing strategy development.

Naturally, some Blue Labs features are more likely to stick around than others, so caution is advised before taking any Lab feature as a given – it’s best to wait until features are really cemented into Blue’s offering before incorporating them into strategies.

More on Twitter Blue, including comprehensive FAQs can be found here: About Twitter Blue.

Drawbacks of Twitter Blue

• Twitter Blue doesn’t offer free trials, so you can’t test out the new features before paying for the service first.
• Subscriptions can be cancelled from the platform at any time
• Even though ads are significantly reduced with a Twitter Blue subscription, the platform still isn’t ad-free.

Is Twitter Blue worth it?

For casual users or organisations who Twitter isn’t a priority social media platform for, it’s hard to make the case that a subscription is worth it, as there’s less scope to really utilise and make the most out of additional or unique functionality.

If Twitter forms a significant part of an organisation or individual’s social strategy, a more compelling argument could be made to try it out.

Any Twitter user (brand, individual or organisation) who regularly shares content and/or engages with others could make use of a number of select features that Twitter Blue provides.

Twitter Gold Checkmark

The gold checkmark indicates that an account is an official business on Twitter through Verified Organizations, and they’re used to differentiate between verified businesses and verified individuals.

Learn more about profile labels on Twitter and what they mean.

To get a gold checkmark, in theory all you need is to be:

1. an official business
2. subscribed to Twitter Blue for Business

However, these two points will need to be verified by Twitter.

The service is currently in the testing phase and it’s not abundantly clear how one acquires a gold checkmark through regular Twitter Blue subscription alone besides through an early access waiting list.

Recommended Reading

Want more insight into how organisations like yours are evolving their Twitter strategies? Take a look at our recommended reading:

• Twitter adds public view counts: 6 responses to consider
• Move to Mastodon or trust Twitter? How to set a sustainable social strategy
• Twitter copypasta policy limits the visibility of mass-coordinate tweets

Get in touch if you’d like to chat through your Twitter strategy – hello@empower.agency