With 10 euros you can do things: buy your lunch, do a movie session but also subscribe to Twitter Blue, the paid certification of Elon Musk’s social network.
Finally subscribe yes, but after some preliminary requisitions. You must not have changed your name or profile picture in the last three days. The famous moment of entering your means of payment arrives. We chose the monthly subscription (you never know what tomorrow will bring with Elon Musk, better not commit to a year) and per computer, just to avoid the additional costs linked to Elon Musk’s conflicts with Apple and Google.
Official cost of the operation: 8 euros. Unofficial cost number 1: 9.60 euros. Since the VAT is not indicated in the communication. Unofficial cost number 2: 9.98 euros, after the additional bank charges associated with this purchase outside the European Union.
No automatic credential
First surprise after activating the subscription: there is no blue tick next to the name. We will have to wait until the end… 7 days before we see the badge appear, still THE symbol of this certification. The reason: to be verified, you have to be approved by Twitter’s moderation teams, which are not very numerous after the firings carried out by Elon Musk.
While we wait for the long-awaited flagship, let’s explore the features on offer. On the show: NFT profile pictures, posting hour-long videos in Full HD, or even a “Play” functionality that allows for a more readable display of long threads of tweets. Features of little use to the vast majority of users of the social network.
A “Popular Articles” tab also lists news articles broadcast multiple times by the accounts we follow or additional accounts. A function that could have been a good information tool but in the end often collects the same media.
The “Audio” tab is also reinforced with podcasts, on different topics (news, technology, sports, cinema, economy, etc.), but also replays of spaces, audio conferences from Twitter. It is also possible to set reminders about upcoming spaces.
More laborious tweets
But the great revolution that Twitter Blue brought is based, of course, on the modification of tweets. In fact, the subscription offers the possibility to edit the tweets themselves up to five times, within thirty minutes of posting. If the idea seduces at first, we quickly realize that it is quite useless and rarely used. The habit of deleting and redoing your tweet can make a comeback, and ultimately it’s just as quick, but mostly much less expensive.
The other addition that Twitter Blue makes regarding tweets is based on the possibility of canceling a tweet before it is published. Regret insults or message error: Twitter Blue starts a 30 second timer from the moment the user clicks the “Tweeter” button. A timer that can be shortened by pressing “Send” again, but that complicates and lengthens the process of sending tweets, especially when you want to exchange quickly.
One of the promises of this paid subscription is also to further highlight subscribers’ tweets in other users’ feeds. A measure that is difficult to quantify and observe as news sources are constantly reworked, particularly with the recent addition of the “For You” tab, constantly updated with tweets that are supposed to engage the Internet user.
Aesthetics more than practical
However, fans of advanced customization will be satisfied with Twitter Blue. As in the web interface, it is possible to choose the color of the buttons and hyperlinks among six colors, which makes the mobile application more pleasant. Another possible customization: the logo of the application on your home screen. But again, this is just a very anecdotal feature.
The only really interesting customization remains the navigation bar located at the bottom of the application. Twitter has constantly tweaked it over the months and years, removing and adding shortcuts that users sometimes find useless. Twitter Blue thus allows you to choose between 2 and 6 elements (notifications, Explorer, private messages, communities, lists, Spaces, bookmarks, etc.) to display, as well as their order of appearance in the bottom bar (simply by sliding the icons).
In short, Twitter Blue could have been an interesting tool for a more pleasant and personalized use of the social network. But at 11 euros a month, we expect more (much more!) than a few colored buttons and other gadgets that in the end are not very useful and used.
Source: BFM TV
