Twitter Blue now available in India; prices start at Rs 650 per month

Twitter Blue is available for a monthly fee of Rs 650 on the web and Rs 900 on mobile devices in India (Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg)

Twitter has extended its subscription service Twitter Blue to India, Brazil, and Indonesia on February 8, as the Elon Musk-owned social media firm looks to aggressively double down on its monetisation efforts.

The service is currently available for a monthly fee of Rs 650 on the web and Rs 900 on mobile devices. Twitter also offers a discounted annual plan of Rs 6,800 per year, which translates to Rs 566.67 per month.

The higher subscription fee on iOS and Android devices is likely to offset the 15-30% commission fee levied by Apple and Google on subscriptions.

With this launch, Twitter Blue is now available in 15 markets including the United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia among others, since its relaunch in December 2022.

The revamped Twitter Blue subscription gives users a verified Blue checkmark and a range of additional features including the ability to edit tweets, post longer videos of upto 60 minutes (2GB file size) through web, organise bookmarks, customise the app icon, add NFT profile pictures and get early access to new features.

On February 8, Twitter started allowing Twitter Blue subscribers in the United States to create long tweets of up to 4,000 characters. These tweets will be capped at 280 characters with a "show more" prompt.

Soon, Twitter Blue subscribers will also see 50% fewer ads in their home timeline and their tweets will be prioritised in conversations they participate in and the search functionality, the company states.

Read: Elon Musk says Twitter to roll out zero ads subscription model

On February 3, Elon Musk also announced that Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads, provided they are subscribers to Twitter Blue. However, he has not disclosed any further information.

Musk faces a massive challenge to turn around the debt-laden company by revving up its revenues. It also comes amid a continued slowdown in the online advertising market due to the global economic downturn which has severely impacted the revenue growth of advertising-dependent internet firms such as Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and Snap.

Twitter Blue is one of the company's key initiatives to diversify its revenue streams beyond advertising. In November 2022, Musk had told employees that he wants at least half of the company's revenue to come from subscriptions, thereby reducing the social media firm's reliance on advertising.

Twitter is on track to make about $3 billion in 2023, Musk said while defending his drastic cost-cutting measures in a live Twitter Spaces session in December 2022.

That said, the service has not had a good start. Only 180,000 people in the United States have been paying for a Twitter subscription as of mid-January, which accounts for less than 0.2% of the company's monthly active users in the country, according to The Information.

This would imply 290,000 subscribers globally and around $28 million in annual revenue, less than 1% of the $3 billion that Twitter intends to make this year, it noted.