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Twitter boss Musk on the smartphone: He sees the Blue subscription as an important pillar for the company
Photo: Joe Skipper / REUTERS
Twitter has now activated its paid monthly subscription called Twitter Blue in Germany.
This was announced on Friday by the German company representative Jolanta Baboulidis.
Whether the subscription offer was actually already available in practice varied in the afternoon depending on the account and platform used.
On the author's Android device, for example, "Twitter Blue" was already controllable as a sub-item of the menu item "Settings and data protection" - not yet on an iOS device and in the Chrome browser (with the same account).
With a colleague, on the other hand, the blue package could already be booked via the Chrome browser.
Twitter Blue is sort of a premium variant of Twitter.
But your flagship is the blue tick that is displayed next to the username of paying subscribers – as a kind of digital badge.
A new advertising page for Twitter Blue says that if you want to get the blue tick, you need a verified phone number.
And then of course there is the monthly price.
In the case of the Android test device, a subscription for eleven euros per month would be possible.
With this pricing, Twitter passes Google's commission on to customers, the price for a contract via iPhone app should be identical.
However, if you book the service via the browser, i.e. without Google or Apple as an intermediary, you only pay eight euros per month.
Not every extra is immediately available
Pairing the blue subscription with the blue tick is an idea that Elon Musk personally promoted heavily.
Musk's first attempt with the purchased hooks failed spectacularly: online trolls bought accounts and pretended to be celebrities or large companies.
New security measures should prevent this in the future.
The approach is controversial among users of the platform, because originally the tick did not signal that someone had taken out a subscription and that their phone number was verified.
Rather, he indicated that an account belonged to a well-known musician, athlete or media representative, for example.
It therefore stood for official accounts, not for paid accounts.
Before Musk's takeover, Blue users only got a few convenience features, but also paid significantly less for them.
If you want to see what exactly a blue tick stands for - for an active subscription or an older authenticity notice - you can click on the tick next to an account name.
Old hooks now say: »This account was verified in the old system.
It's possibly (but not necessarily) noteworthy."
Twitter also favors paid subscribers for visibility, promising them "top of the list" for replies, mentions, and searches.
In Germany, however, this function still seems to be pending, in the app it is marked "Coming soon".
Same for the extra feature »50 percent less ads in your homepage timeline«.
Access to so-called Twitter Blue Labs functions already seems to be working: They include the ability to edit tweets up to five times within 30 minutes of sending them.
Blue subscribers can also post longer and higher resolution videos than non-subscribers.
If you want to take out a Blue subscription, your account must be at least 90 days old.
Likewise, if you change your name, you lose your blue tick until the account has been approved for the badge with the new name.
mbo
