The Rundown: Twitter bets on long-form content in its first subscription play with Twitter Blue

Twitter is shipping its first subscription product in the United States, and it’s hoping that more long-form content will encourage the platform’s heaviest users to spend even more time on Twitter.

On Tuesday, Nov. 9, Twitter announced that Twitter Blue is now available in the United States about five months after it first launched in Australia in Canada. It costs $2.99 per month; there is currently no option to subscribe annually.

The key details

• For its U.S. launch, Twitter added a couple features to Twitter Blue, most notably the key elements of Scroll, which Twitter acquired in May. These include the ability to read articles from more than 300 publishers’ sites — including The Atlantic and the Washington Post — without ads. Twitter Blue users will also get access to a feature of Nuzzel, a service Scroll had acquired and Twitter shut down, which shows subscribers a list of the most shared stories within their network on the platform, along with the tweets those users posted about the articles.
• Twitter Blue users also get the chance to test out new products the platform is considering. At the moment, these include longer native video uploads (up to 10 minutes) and the ability to pin conversations within one’s direct messages. 
• Twitter is staying mum about how much traction Twitter Blue has. While the platform is “really excited about the reaction we saw” in Australia and Canada, it is not sharing how many subscribers it has.

For power users, by power users

When Twitter launched its first version of Twitter Blue in Australia and Canada over the summer, the product was more tool-focused than experience-focused, giving subscribers access to features including different color schemes, a bookmarking feature that allows users to save and organize tweets, and reader mode, which automatically converts Twitter threads into posts subscribers can read on Twitter.