TweetDeck may become a paid feature on Twitter Blue

It’s starting to look like the next version of TweetDeck, the power user focused version of the Twitter app, won’t be free. Security researcher Jin Manchun Wong Discover The app’s in-progress signup page, which prides itself on being a “powerful, real-time tool for people who live on Twitter” and provides an ad-free experience.

Although the page doesn’t explicitly state that you’ll have to pay Twitter to access TweetDeck, companies don’t usually advertise “helping you avoid the thing that makes us money” as a feature for free products (even if, like the current version, of TweetDeck). And you wouldn’t know it, Twitter has already got a paid subscription service It is trying to sell to its premium users.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard a suggestion that Twitter is looking to monetize TweetDeck. Earlier this month, Manchun Wong dig up the code It appears to be redirecting non-blue subscribers trying to access the new version of TweetDeck to the Twitter Blue signup page. And over a year ago, Bloomberg mentioned That Twitter was considering an app subscription service component. This report came a little earlier We heard from Twitter It was working on a “overhaul” of TweetDeck.

We have seen Preview of this overhaul. it is extensive (And divisive) and would likely take quite a bit of work. It’s not impossible for Twitter to do this as part of its drive to show up More friendly towards the community and outside developersbut the company is likely to be Launch Twitter Blue Knowing that TweetDeck can be a huge selling point.

The $2.99 ​​per month subscription looks like it’s aimed at people who use Twitter professionally, so the pro version of its app fits right in with the service’s feature set.

There is of course an opposite point to this theory: Twitter Blue is not ad-free. This fact makes up for it Two points in the service FAQ. So how can an ad-free TweetDeck be proof that it will soon become part of Twitter Blue?

It’s a fair question, but frankly, this discrepancy convinces me more – having TweetDeck as a blue feature would allow Twitter to offer paying subscribers a way to have an ad-free experience without having to do the work of kicking them out of the web and mobile apps. It’s kind of a win-win (for Twitter, at least).

Twitter said it had “nothing to share about this at the moment” in response to the edgeQuestion as to whether it has plans to monetize TweetDeck, and hasn’t announced an official launch date for the TweetDeck update. When that comes, I suspect it’s being billed as a great new feature for Blue subscribers. (Given how much my colleagues love TweetDeck, I also suspect there might be quite a few new subscribers to the service if that’s the case.)