After launching Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue subscription service in five countries last month, the company has expanded its paid plans to users in Japan. Both the old (launched in 2021) and improved Twitter Blue subscriptions were available in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
Twitter says on its support page that users in Japan can purchase a subscription for 980 yen ($7.40) per month on the web and 1,380 yen ($10.42) per month on iOS. These prices are slightly lower than US prices of $8/month for web and $11/month for iOS.
Currently, Twitter Blue offers features such as blue verified badges, long video uploads, prioritization in conversation replies, thread reader, ability to edit Tweets, custom icons and themes, and more. Some of these features were already present in previous versions of Paid Subscriptions, but verification marks, increased video upload limits, and ranking boosts are newly introduced features.
Musk, who took over Twitter, had grand plans to grow subscribers and reduce reliance on advertising revenue. He first launched a new version of his Twitter Blue in November, but had to shut it down quickly after people impersonated celebrities and brands.
Since then, the company has tried to put guardrails on its new verification system by requiring users to obtain a phone number to purchase Blue subscriptions and by imposing a 90-day cool-off period on newly created accounts. . However, Twitter’s manual verification system for checking names and bios isn’t working as intended. Last week, a Washington Post reporter successfully created a fake account for Senator Edward J. Markey.
