You now have a very practical reason to subscribe to Twitter Blue beyond long video uploads and the coveted blue checkmark. As of today, Blue members in the US can post tweets up to 4,000 characters long. You can't currently schedule these posts or save them as drafts, but this could be helpful if you'd rather not write a lengthy multi-tweet thread just to share your thoughts.
Free Twitter users can still reply to and quote these tweets. And yes, Twitter is aware that scrolling through a sea of these lengthy posts could be frustrating. Any tweet longer than 280 characters now hides any extra content beyond a "show more" prompt. Blue normally costs $8 per month, or $84 per year.
need more than 280 characters to express yourself?
— Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) February 8, 2023
we know that lots of you do… and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. we get that.
so we're introducing longer Tweets! you're gonna want to check this out. tap this 👉… https://t.co/lge9udRzLE
This probably won't prompt you to switch from social networks like Facebook or Mastodon, where long posts have been available for a while. However, it could be helpful if you'd like to share the same post across multiple social platforms without having to split it up or write a condensed version.
There's certainly pressure on Twitter to make Blue more appealing. Twitter reportedly only had 180,000 Blue subscribers in the US as of mid-January, and roughly 290,000 worldwide. While the revamped subscription hasn't been available for very long, it needs to be highly attractive to enthusiasts if Elon Musk wants to achieve a goal of generating half of Twitter's revenue from subscriptions.