Twitter to end ad-free news articles for Blue subscribers: What it means?
2 min read 01 Nov 2022, 08:25 PM ISTTwitter Blue was launched last year as the platform's first subscription service that offered exclusive access to premium features
PremiumTwitter will no longer allow subscribers of its Blue service to access ad-free articles. Since Elon Musk took over the social media platform much has been speculated about how it will shape up in the future, and it is common knowledge now that the tech billionaire and his team are currently focusing on revamping the Twitter Blue program. While it has been widely reported that the company is planning to monitise its verification feature, Wall Street Journal notified on Tuesday that the platform is also removing some of the existing features like publisher partnerships
The Verge said, the company sent an email to all publishers on October 31 notifying them that the Twitter Blue partnership is ending.
The email reads, “In the coming weeks, we’ll be launching an update to Twitter Blue. In the course of this work, we have made the decision to discontinue Ad-free Articles, effective as of the close of business today, October 31, 2022. This hard decision will allow us to focus our resources on adding additional value for our members. Expect to hear more from us soon."
“Starting tomorrow, we will stop displaying the “Twitter Blue Publisher" label on any Tweets containing your articles. We will no longer be sending a Twitter Blue token when people on Twitter access articles from your properties. This will prevent the ad-free experience on your site from loading." Let's dig deeper to understand what it means for the consumers:
What is Twitter Blue?
Twitter Blue was launched in June last year as the platform's first subscription service that offered exclusive access to premium features, including an option to edit tweets.
The service allowed subscribers to read articles from some publishers without advertisements. The social media platform also made an edit button available to paid subscribers in the United States last month.
The program allowed paid users to see ad-free articles on participating publications, and the social network would pay publishers an equivalent amount of ad revenue earned from one view. It had more than 350 publishers on board including the likes of The Washington Post, L.A. Times, Reuters, and The Atlantic.
What are the changes that we are likely to see?
Currently, some users can still see labels accompanying this article, but Twitter will gradually stop showing them, TechCruch said.
Publishers have been told to remove any Twitter Blue code from their website and were informed they would only be able to access the Twitter Blue Publisher portal through the end of November.
All payouts will continue on the regular schedule until the program, which the email described as a “test," is shut down.
Twitter is planning more changes to its Blue subscription plan that costs $4.99 per month, including making user verification a part of the paid service, according to media reports.
