Twitter Blue paid subscription service also on sale in the Netherlands

The paid subscription for Twitter is now also available in the Netherlands. Those who use the website or the social media platform's mobile apps will be able to display the an icon on their home page showing they paid for the Twitter Blue service. "All Twitter Blue features will be available immediately except the blue checkmark, which will appear on eligible profiles after a review to ensure subscribed accounts meet all eligibility criteria," Twitter said.

Those who take out the subscription via the Twitter website for an entire year will pay 84 euros, or 8 euros per month for the version which can be cancelled monthly. But anyone who wants to conclude such a contract via an iOS or Android device will have to pay 37.5 percent more per month, or just under 37 percent annually.

For that money, replies to tweets will rank higher. Twitter users with a Blue subscription can also edit their messages after publication, and they will see fewer advertisements.

Twitter Blue existed before Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last year, but after that purchase he made many changes to the subscription service in an attempt to generate more revenue apart from advertising. The most famous change is that Blue members will eventually get a blue check mark which previously indicated that a user was verified as a business, organization, or person of prominence.

The first time Twitter put the blue checkmarks up for sale, the system was bogged down in chaos. Immediately after the introduction, many people pretended to be well-known companies, stars and politicians and managed to still get approved as being the person or organization they claimed to be. Now, all accounts that take out a Blue subscription are screened again to prevent recurrence.

For the time being, Twitter Blue does not seem to be a great success. According to US tech news websites, there are only a few hundred thousand subscribers, but Twitter itself does not publish those figures. That would mean that less than 1 percent of all accounts on Twitter pay for the extras that Blue offers.

According to news site TechCrunch, Twitter Blue has expanded to a total of 20 European countries. It is now available in 35 countries.