Twitter Blue expands to six new countries, brings back Spaces curation • TechCrunch

Twitter is in a hurry to make money, and in another step that might lead to some revenue it has expanded the Twitter Blue subscription to six new countries. The paid plans are now available in Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain making it 12 regions in total to which users can subscribe to it.

The company also launching a new Spaces tab with curated stations for live and recorded spaces along with podcasts. Users without a Twitter Blue subscription can access the Spaces tab already but it mostly shows what live audio sessions are currently going on.

Twitter is also bringing back themed stations that list Spaces station by topics. The company already started testing it in August before Musk took over. But in the last few months, Spaces had almost no curation because of the layoffs. Now, the social network might be relying on algorithms to group related real-time audio conversations together.

The social network is making podcasts available to only Blue subscribers and “some people on Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android apps.” Podcasts were also integrated into Twitter in the pre-Musk era, but the company seems to be resuming work on some of those projects. Twitter said that at the beginning, there will be no way to search for podcasts. So you will have to listen to whatever the algorithm serves you.

Twitter Blue’s expansion is not surprising as the company aims to bring more revenue in all ways possible. Last month, the social media company enabled people on Android to get a subscription. On Thursday, Twitter announced that it is discontinuing free access to its API and will roll out a basic paid plan next week. While the company didn’t declare the price tag, Elon Musk tweeted that basic plans might cost $100 a month — which could be steep for some independent developers, students, and researchers.

While the company has registered declining ad revenue, the good news for Musk is that plenty of companies including PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev have reportedly committed millions of dollars for Superbowl takeover ads on Twitter. Last month, the social network teamed up with ad tech firm DoubleVerify Integral Ad Science (IAS) to inform marketers if their ads are appearing next to inappropriate tweets.