What is Twitter Blue and Should You Subscribe?

Jun. 5, 2021

In an attempt to offer users something similar to an edit button, Twitter has brought an Undo tweet feature as part of Twitter Blue. As the name suggests, you can set a timer of up to 30 seconds and choose to undo the tweet within this time period. You can shorten the expiration period to 5, 10, or 20 seconds too. What this essentially gives users isa window to review their tweets.

To clarify, tweets are shared only after the ‘undo send’ period expires. However, after reviewing the tweet, you can tap on the “Send now” button to skip the timer. But, if you spot a typo, tap on the “Undo” button, re-draft the tweet, and then share it with the world.

If you often find yourself spotting typos just after sending out a tweet, the undo tweet feature is meant for you. It will enable you to see a preview of the sent tweet before it reaches your followers. This is the perfect solution for users who want to delete a tweet before someone sees it.

Have you ever wanted a way to organize all your Twitter bookmarks? If yes, the new Bookmark folders feature might be what you are looking for. With Bookmark Folders, you cangroup your bookmarked tweets into separate folders. All you have to do is assign folder names and move bookmarked tweets to folders.

While we love this feature exists, Twitter shouldn’t be charging a fee for something so simple. It’s a feature everyone would love to have but won’t cough up money for. We have included a free alternative to the ‘Bookmarked Tweets’ feature down below, so read on.

The red in color themes doesn’t match the red in app icons 🥴

Also why aren’t there matching pairs of themes and iconspic.twitter.com/LxxfSeUOf2

To sign up, open the Twitter app for iOS, open the hamburger menu via the three horizontal lines at the top left. Here, you will see the Twitter Blue option.
On the next page, press the“Subscribe for $x/month button”and complete the payment.

Now that we have seen all the Twitter Blue features, let’s explore free alternatives to current Twitter Blue features. Whether Twitter Blue isn’t available in your country just yet or you don’t want to pay for these Twitter Blue features, here are your options:

You might have heard of Tweetdeck, but there exists abrowser extensioncalled Better Tweetdeck that enhances the capabilities of Tweetdeck. One noteworthy feature of the extension is re-draft, which essentially works like the “Undo tweet” feature. Here’s how it works:

Install Better Tweetdeck extension (links below) on your desired browser and click on the options menu (three horizontal dots) of your recent tweet in Tweetdeck (visit).You will see a “Re-draft” button here, as shown in the image below:

When you click this button, you will get the option to edit the original tweet. After you have made the changes, click on the “Tweet” button.Better Tweetdeck will now automatically delete the original tweet and post the new tweet. For example, I redrafted my original ‘Test tweet’ and replaced it with ‘Test tweet 2’ here.

So, how is Better Tweetdeck’s re-draft feature different from Twitter’s paid undo tweet option? Well, the answer is simple. While Twitter’s undo tweet feature doesn’t post your tweet during the undo time period, Better Tweetdeck will post your original tweet. The extension is essentially eliminating the hassle of manually deleting and replacing your original tweet while making corrections. With all that said, Better Tweetdeck is a good alternative to Twitter Blue’s undo tweet feature.

Install Better Tweetdeck (Chrome,Edge,Firefox,Safari)

The Bookmark folders feature is arguably the most attractive Twitter Blue addition for most users. And that’s for a good reason. If you often use Twitter’s built-in bookmarks tool, it is a neat bonus to stay organized. However, if you don’t mind using a third-party service, you could use one of thebest bookmark managers.

One bookmark manager I would recommend for this use case is Pocket. Owned by Mozilla, the service has a free tier with essential features.Within Pocket, you can assign tags to organize tweets. As far as availability is concerned, Pocket is built into the Firefox browser. Users of other browsers can install Pocket’s Chrome extension to quickly save tweets, instead of shelling out money on Twitter Blue’s Bookmark Folders feature.

Install the extension andclick on the “Save to Pocket” buttonto save a Twitter thread to your Pocket account. You also have the Pocket mobile app available on Android and iOS. To use that, share the tweet and choose Pocket from the share sheet.

Download Pocket (Android|iOS|Chrome extension)

Twitter Blue’s Reader mode has powerful alternatives since Twitter users have long been using third-party services to save Twitter threads. One such tool is the Thread Reader bot. Log in to Thread Reader and reply to a Twitter thread in the following format to compile it into a single post and read it comfortably.

If you are looking for alternatives to Thread Reader, check out our article on thebest ways to save Twitter threads. You will find other great tools, including Readwise, Threader, and Unroll Thread, along with instructions to use them in that article.

Check outThread Reader

If you don’t want to pay for the new color themes and icons, I mean, why would you. It would be wiser to consider using the web version of Twitter on mobile. That’s because Twitter’s web client has had these themes for a while now, and they are absolutely free.

And for new icons, you should first learnhow to use custom app icons on iPhone. Once that’s done, go through our article oncreative iOS 14 home screen design ideasto find a good icon pack. Android users should check out our lists of thebest free icon packsandcool new icon packs.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess that an edit button is the top user-requested feature on Twitter. In fact, I see at least a tweet about users asking for an edit button once a week. The worst part is that Twitter knows this and is choosing not to add it. Last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey revealed thatTwitter is unlikely to add an edit buttonas it could lead to misunderstandings between the original poster and someone who retweeted it.

Well, Twitter could always go the Facebook way and add an edit history section to solve this problem. Or how about limiting the ability to edit tweets within 30 seconds and then adding an ‘edited’ label for such tweets? Most Twitter users want an edit button to correct typo errors, and if Twitter truly wants to give power user features, they should consider adding an edit button to the platform.

Twitter allowed users to upload animated profile pictures, but that’s no longer the case. During this transition, users who already applied an animated profile picture remained unaffected. You might have come across some Twitter users who would never change their animated profile picture to preserve their ‘early Twitter user’ status.

While I personally don’t want animated avatars to make a comeback, Twitter is likely to witness more Twitter Blue adopters if they reintroduce the feature behind a paywall.

Although Twitter lets you search for people and groups in the direct messages section, you can’t search DMs by keywords. This feature could be appealing to users who use keywords to search messages on other messaging platforms.

Twitter could figure out a way to let Twitter Blue subscribers test exciting new Twitter features before they are available to the public.

After going through Twitter Blue features and the potential free alternatives, it’s evident that most Twitter users don’t need Twitter Blue at its current state. Unless one of the existing features is important to you and fits your workflow, you are better off without Twitter Blue.

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.