TweetDeck might become a paid Twitter Blue feature

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It looks like the upcoming version of TweetDeck will be free. Jane Manchun Wong discovered a work-in-progress sign-up page for the app, which claims to be a powerful real-time tool for people who live on the social networking site.

The page doesn't explicitly say you'll have to pay, but companies don't usually advertise features that make them money. It's not a new thing for Twitter to have a paid subscription service that it's trying to sell to its power users.

Twitter is filling in the new @TweetDeck signup page that they’re working on. Two new highlights:



1. A link for “the legacy version of TweetDeck” (even though it might be deprecated at some point in the future)



2. “Ad-free experience” being marketed as the selling point :P https://t.co/XP6sYsTUGM pic.twitter.com/fRc0ujZ7o2

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 30, 2022

This isn't the first time we've heard that the social network is looking to make money. Manchun Wong dug up code that may have led non-Blue subscribers to the sign-up page for the new version of TweetDeck. A year ago, it was reported that a subscription service component was being considered for the app. It was just before we heard from the company that it was working on a big change.

We have seen a preview of that. It took a good amount of work and is extensive. It's not impossible that the company is trying to be friendlier towards the community and third-party developers, but it's more likely that it's doing it to get people to use the service.

The pro version of its app would fit right into the service's feature-set, since it's aimed at people who use Twitter professionally.

There is a counter-point to this theory. Two points are made up in the FAQ for the service. So how would the fact that it is ad-free be evidence that it is going to be a part of Twitter Blue?

It's a fair question, but honestly, that contradiction convinces me that having a blue feature on the service would allow it to offer its paying subscribers a way to get an ad-free experience without it having to do the work of exorcising. It is a bit of a win-win.

In response to The Verge's question about whether it had plans to monetize TweetDeck, it hasn't announced an official launch date. I think it will be a great new perk for Blue subscribers. I think there could be quite a few new subscribers to the service if that is the case.