Legacy Twitter check mark is disappeared on April 1, Twitter said, and going forward, the only way users can get the coveted blue badge is to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription. That raises a big question for Twitter and owner Elon Musk: will that nail ultimately drive more of the social network’s premium takeover?
So far, the reception has been quite impressive. From relaunched three months ago As a major boost to non-advertising revenue, Twitter Blue only pulled in $11 million from mobile subscriptions, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
The $11 million figure is notable because Twitter is trading with Twitter Blue at a time when advertising – which traditionally makes up the majority of Twitter’s earnings – is still at Rapid decline.
In part, that drop was due to the economy as a whole, which boosted reduced marketing spending. But advertisers have also been hesitant to introduce Twitter amid its rapidly changing landscape, chaotic mistakeAnd threats to overall brand safety as Elon Musk withdrew previous protections. Since then, Twitter has attempted to repair some of those relationships, including by partnerships with adtech companies For example, DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS), but it’s not clear to what extent revenue has improved as a result.
While $11 million is a small number, we should be forewarned that this estimate does not include web-based subscriptions. The company also couldn’t find out who was paying for annual or monthly Blue subscriptions. The figures cover the 20 markets where Blue was launched before this week. It wasn’t until yesterday that Twitter offered the service Global.
In details shared with TechCrunch, Sensor Tower estimates that Blue has more than 385,000 mobile subscribers worldwide on both iOS and Android. The United States is its largest market, with 246,000 subscribers spending about $8 million through their mobile devices.
“The loss of ad demand, driven by both broader macro uncertainty and Twitter’s platform-specific issues, has led to the loss of advertising demand,” said Abe Yousef, senior analyst at Sensor Tower. Alternative revenue streams are becoming quite attractive for social media.”
It is not clear what the total number of Twitter users is currently, but since 2nd quarter of last yearit says it has almost 238 million monetized daily active users (its own figures).
The company, according to many reports, has been advertiser bleeding since Musk acquired Twitter and took over as CEO. A report earlier this month from The Wall Street Journal said the December 2022 earnings that Twitter shares with investors recorded a 40% drop in revenue. Twitter adjusted earnings because of it. To put the $11 million in Twitter Blue mobile subscriptions into revenue context, for comparison, in Q2 2022, Twitter’s most recent quarterly earnings report (when it was still a delivery company) publicly translated), advertising generated all but $100,000 of Twitter’s nearly $1.2 billion in total revenue.
There are also questions about how that $11 million will be recurring in the coming months. Yousef told us that Sensor Tower believes an annual subscription will be a “minimum” rate out of $11 million.
“Social media users are less likely to spend more than $100 all at once compared to $11 for 1-2 months to try out a service and see if they like it,” he points out. Are not”.
Some have not very impressed…
Blue Twitter originally debuted in a limited number of markets in 2021 as a proficient user-driven service, with perks that may only feel important to that group — bookmarking, the chance to ‘redo’ a Tweet, read ad-free articles and early access to tests through Twitter Labs among them.
But under Musk, Blue is focused on something else: it’s part of his strategy to rebuild the company’s revenue model. As a result, the features — both the ones that are live plus those that Twitter promises coming soon — feel more central to the mainstream Twitter experience.
In addition to the badges, Blue users can edit tweets, upload larger videos, get a “reader” view of longer topics, etc. It’s also promising (but not out yet) less ads and more visibility for Blue users in the answers.
Subscriptions are on sale for $11 per month (or local equivalent) on iOS and Android and $8 on the web. (Higher mobile prices are due to app store cuts).
New data shows that US Twitter users on mobile devices spent nearly $1.8 million on Twitter Blue subscriptions in the first month after relaunching in December. This suggests that the epidemic The service received more than 160,000 mobile subscribers in the country in the first month since its relaunch, Yousef said.
But the company has some work to do as it advances business in its strongest markets. In India, the company’s second largest market by users after the US, Twitter Launching Blue in February. Since then, Sensor Tower says only $301,000 has been spent on Blue, which equates to about 17,000 mobile subscribers.
Yousef said India has become Twitter’s sixth-largest mobile market for in-app purchases after Twitter Blue launched locally. The analyst said the country represented Twitter’s eighth-largest mobile market in terms of in-app purchases nearly ten months before the company acquired it, and Twitter Blue launched and relaunched afterward.
Sensor Tower data is based on in-app purchases from Twitter’s mobile apps. Does the company have other? in-app purchases besides Twitter Blue. However, Yousef says that with the substantial tested increase in in-app purchase revenue following the relaunch of Twitter Blue, you can attribute most of that revenue to the subscription product, with tweets Ads and other in-app purchases provide very little in-app purchase revenue.
We’ve reached out to Twitter for feedback on these numbers. We no reply.
