Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Twitter users are reporting that the option to sign up for the company’s new $7.99 subscription service, Twitter Blue, has disappeared from the platform’s iOS app just days after the service launched.
You could previously subscribe to Twitter Blue from the sidebar in the iOS app (the service has yet to launch for Android users), but users this morning reported that the option has disappeared. For those for whom the link is still available, trying to sign up only returns an error message. “Thank you for your interest!” it reads. “Twitter Blue will be available in your country in the future. Please check back later.”
Image: Tom Warren / The Verge
Trying to sign up for Twitter Blue in the UK this morning, Friday November 11th, only returned an error message.
Literally like an hour ago you could still sign up for Twitter Blue and now it’s gone. Great feature while it lasted though it was the Chiquita tweets that did it for me pic.twitter.com/II2mIJA8Df
— Evan Greer is on Mastodon (@evan_greer) November 11, 2022
LOL and now Twitter Blue is gone.
Nothing like skipping all testing, market research, ignoring your veteran team members, no A/B testing, and just going live with all new random thoughts you have to the entire population of the largest social media platform.
— Video Game Attorney (@Morrison) November 11, 2022
Twitter seems to have unlaunched the new $7.99 Twitter Blue subscription
Checked with Twitter’s API and the in-app purchase for Twitter Blue Verified is no longer listed for production
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) November 11, 2022
It’s not clear why users aren’t able to sign up for Twitter Blue. Twitter could be intentionally pausing access to the service while it deals with the chaos its launch has caused (countless users have been buying verification in order to impersonate brands and celebrities). Or, the system could have unintentionally collapsed.
Since Elon Musk’s mass-firing of Twitter’s work force earlier this week, many people — including current employees — have predicted that the service is in increasing danger of breakdown, as small errors pile-up un-addressed and the company’s remaining staff are pushed to their limit by stress, overwork, and a mandate to return to the office in person.
The launch itself of Twitter Blue has been incredibly chaotic, with Twitter trying to compensate for the confusing surge in fakes with the launch of another verification badge — a gray tick marking accounts as “official.” The company launched this feature, removed it, then launched it again, all in the space of a few days. In this context, the fact that Twitter Blue signups have disappeared from the company’s iOS app is merely par for the course — most things happening to Twitter right now are out of the blue.
Quite the day!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2022