Twitter is continuing to try to make money by expanding its paid service. The company has now added six new countries to the list of areas where users can subscribe to Twitter Blue. This includes Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. This makes it twelve countries in total where people can pay for the privilege of having more access to the site and its content. It’s unclear how much this will cost users or what benefits they’ll receive in exchange for their money, but Twitter is clearly looking for ways to generate more revenue from its users.
Twitter is continuing to expand its offerings to users with a subscription, by launching a new tab called Spaces. The Spaces tab provides an overview of live and recorded spaces along with podcasts, making it easier for users without a Twitter Blue subscription to access the content.
Twitter is bringing back themed stations that list Spaces station by topics. The company already started testing it in August before Musk took over. But in the last few months, Spaces had almost no curation because of the layoffs. Now, the social network might be relying on algorithms to group related real-time audio conversations together so that people can find content more easily.
Only those who are subscribed to Blue’s social media service can access podcasts on Twitter. This strategy may be designed to attract more loyal followers to the network, but it could also alienate other users who prefer not to participate in social media campaigns. Additionally, there is no way for non-subscribers to search for podcasts on Twitter at this time.
As Twitter expands its services, it has also been investing in other revenue-generating methods. Earlier this month, the company announced that it would be enabling people on Android to get a subscription service. Next week, the social media company will discontinue free access to its API and will instead offer a basic paid plan. While this might be steep for some users, it is clear that Twitter is focused on increasing all forms of revenue.
In what could be seen as a positive development for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ad revenue on Twitter reportedly decreased during the first quarter of 2019, but the social media platform has secured millions of dollars in advertising commitments from companies including PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev. Super Bowl 2019 takeover ads are expected to be some of the most expensive ever, so it is good news for Tesla that it appears to have attracted interest from big hitters in the industry.
