Twitter launches its Blue subscription service in Japan • businessroundups.org

After launching Elon Musk’s version of the Twitter Blue subscription service last month in five countries, the company has expanded the paid subscription to users in Japan. Both the old (launched in 2021) and renewed Twitter Blue plans were available in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Twitter noted on its support page that users in Japan can purchase the subscription for ¥980 ($7.40) per month on the web and ¥1,380 ($10.42) per month on iOS. These prices are slightly lower than US prices of $8 per month on the web and $11 per month on iOS.

Currently, Twitter Blue offers features such as the blue verification badge, longer video uploads, priority ranking in conversation replies, a thread reader, and a tweet editing feature, along with custom icons and themes. While some of these features were already present in the legacy version of the paid plan, the verification sign, higher video upload limit, and ranking boost are newly introduced features.

After acquiring Twitter, Musk has big plans to reduce dependence on ad revenue by adding more subscribers. He initially launched a new version of Twitter Blue in November, but had to shut it down quickly due to people posing as celebrities and brands.

Since then, the company has attempted to circumvent the new verification system by requiring users to have a phone number to purchase the Blue plan and by imposing a 90-day cooling-off period on newly created accounts. However, Twitter’s manual verification system for reviewing names and bio isn’t working as intended. Last week, a Washington Post reporter successfully created a fake account from Senator Edward J. Markey.