The reasons why I will say goodbye to Twitter Blue after a month of testing

@ElentirENG ES 3·01·2023 · 11:11 0

Those who read me on Twitter will have noticed that my account has appeared in recent weeks with the blue badge of verified accounts.

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On March 3rd, that blue badge will no longer appear on my account, as I have canceled the renewal of the subscription. I decided to try Twitter Blue a month ago as a lot of my professional work is related to social networks and I wanted to be informed about how this new Twitter feature works. Verification took longer than I expected: 10-11 days from when I signed up to the blue badge. I guess it's because Twitter now has fewer employees and they will have received an avalanche of requests.

From the features offered by Twitter Blue (you can consult here) there are three in particular that I was interested in trying: the first is the possibility of editing tweets once they are published, the second is getting a wider diffusion for the tweets I post, and the third is the ability to post longer tweets. Less ad load was also a plus, and when it comes to long videos, I hardly ever post videos on Twitter.

What is my conclusion after a month of testing? Well, rather disappointing. I summarize it in a few points:

• The editing of tweets is very insufficient. It only allows you to edit them for 30 minutes. On Facebook and Gab.com you can edit them for free at any time. In the end, most of the time, by the time you realize a tweet contains a typo, that half hour has already passed.
• Not only have I not gotten more airplay for my tweets, but it has dropped considerably. This is what has surprised me the most. In February I had 334,000 tweet impressions and 109 new followers. In January, before I subscribed, I had 563,000 impressions and 242 new followers, much more than with Twitter Blue. The same thing happened to me in December (488,000 impressions and 296 new followers), in November (698,000 impressions and 264 new followers) and in October (610,000 impressions and 192 new followers). It did not have figures as low as those obtained with Twitter Blue since August and September 2022, that is, before Elon Musk bought Twitter.
• I haven't had a chance to post longer tweets. Twitter ensures that with Twitter Blue you can write tweets with up to 4,000 characters. However, to this day I still can't post tweets longer than 280 characters, the same number as if I hadn't subscribed to Twitter Blue.
• Otherwise, Twitter Blue's saved tweets system allows me to create more folders, which I don't need, and forces me to take two steps to see my saved tweets folder when before it only took one.
• Similarly, I have not seen much use in featured articles either. My reading experience has remained the same as it was before. After all, Twitter's algorithms do a very similar job on the reading walls of the rest of the users.
• As for the verification badge, it's not worth paying 9.68 euros a month for it (it's what the Twitter Blue subscription costs in Spain). I have been on Twitter for 15 years and the prestige that I may have obtained will have been earned by what I have published in all this time, and not because Twitter gives me a blue badge.

I don't know if Twitter will end up forcing its users to pay for services that until now are free, such as Tweetdeck, with which I manage the corporate accounts of this blog. At that time I will consider whether it is worth subscribing again or not. For the time being, and for the reasons stated, at that point it is most likely that you will give up using Tweetdeck.