Users of Twitter Blue who thought 4,000 characters wasn’t enough for a single tweet can now whip up 10,000 character tweets. Revealed by the Twitter Write account on Thursday, this update also lets you enhance tweet text with bold and italic formatting. Also, you might be able to earn some money with your long tweets.
In a tweet (which luckily wasn’t 10,000 characters long), Twitter Write said, “We’re improving the writing and reading experience on Twitter! Starting today, Twitter supports tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting. Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features and request to enable subscriptions on your account to earn money directly to Twitter. Tap ‘Monetization’ in settings to sign up today.”
The jump to 10,000 characters is a huge increase from the previous limit of 4,000 characters for Twitter Blue subscribers and a huge leap from the 280 characters reserved for regular Twitter users. Allowing bold and italic formatting is an additional enhancement intended to further distinguish Twitter Blue’s tweets from those of the average user.
Get paid for long tweets
With Twitter struggling to bounce back financially, owner Elon Musk is scrambling to get more people to sign up for Twitter Blue, which currently costs $8 a month or $84 a year. Along with the ability to compose long tweets, Twitter Blue subscribers can edit or undo recent tweets, add bookmarks and organize tweets, upload long videos, and apply themes to their Twitter pages. But Musk still has to fight to generate enough revenue to pay off the company’s huge debt, especially relying on subscriptions to Blue.
The tweet announcing the increase to 10,000 characters and improved formatting drew some sarcastic comments from Twitter users. “Bold and italic for $8/month?” wrote one user. “Oh joy, even longer tweets never read and block immediately,” wrote another. “Want writers to pay YOU to write on your platform?” wrote a third.
With many people reluctant to shell out money to use Twitter Blue, Twitter is trying to sweeten the deal by encouraging followers to get paid for their long tweets. In the Settings for Twitter Blue users is an option called Monetization, which offers bonus content for your most engaged followers. This monetization plan offers to offer your favorite subscribers something extra in exchange for a certain amount.
In the Monetization section under Settings, Twitter imagines that a Blue user who charges $4.99 per month per user for bonus content could earn between $300 and over $3,000 per month. Of course, your bonus content will need to be engaging and exciting enough to convince enough people to pay for the privilege. To qualify for this plan, Twitter Blue users must have at least 500 followers, have been active on Twitter for the past 30 days, and be at least 18 years old.
Source: “ZDNet.com”