New data extracted from the Twitter app gives us the clearest picture so far of what the company’s upcoming subscription service will look like when it reaches the world.
Rumors have swirled for quite some time that the company was planning to launch a paid service, which was confirmed earlier this year. However, pretty much nothing has been known about what features would be included, it’s pricing, or even the name of the subscription service.
Information pulled by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong may potentially change that, though.
In a series of Tweets, Wong revealed the service is tentatively being called “Twitter Blue” and will offer prices starting at $2.99 a month.
She also revealed the service will include the ability to “undo” sent tweets, manage bookmarked tweets, and access to ad-free news articles.
All of this information is subject to change until an official announcement is made, but here’s what we know about the paid features currently.
Undo Sent Tweets
Obviously, it is pretty much impossible to completely remove something from the internet once it’s out there. Still, Twitter wants to give you the next best thing.
With the undo sent tweets feature, the social network will give users a short chance to rethink what they are about to send out to the world.
When enabled, the feature delays the publishing of your tweet for about 6-seconds after hitting Post. This gives you the extra chance to look over your tweet for any typos or reconsider publishing something incendiary.
This means literally no one will have the chance to see impulsive, poorly written, or incomplete tweets if you hit undo within the short time window.
Bookmarks Collections
Twitter Blue seems set to also offer users the ability to organize and manage their Twitter bookmarks into separate folders.
Currently, bookmarked tweets are all put into a single “Bookmarks” list. This means the feature unfortunately becomes less effective the more you use it, as it gets harder to find what you are looking for in your growing list of saved content.
With Collections, users will be able to keep their increasing bookmarks collection organized and easy to search through. This also opens the potential to being able to share Collections with others in the future, similar to creating and sharing pinboards on Pinterest.
Ad-Free News Articles
Following Twitter’s recent acquisition of Scroll, it has been widely assumed the social network planned to integrate the news service into its paid subscriptions.
Wong’s discoveries confirm this, with ad-free news offered to higher-tier paid users.
The reason for the heightened cost is that Twitter plans to share revenue with publishers on the news platform – making the service a win-win for both readers and publishers alike.
Given where the data was pulled from, it seems likely we are getting close to the official public reveal of Twitter Blue to the world. Until then, however, Wong has given us a glimpse into just what Twitter is planning for its upcoming subscription service.
