Twitter's Blue subscription gets a slightly cheaper annual option

Twitter is now offering a yearly discount on its Blue subscription service, according to a new support page spotted by The Verge. Web users can now sign up for $84 per year ($7 per month) and save a buck over the monthly $8 price. Similar discounts are available in other countries that offer Twitter Blue, including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Until now, Twitter Blue users only had the option of an $8 per month subscription via the web, or $11 month on iOS (passing Apple's 30 percent fee onto the user). However, iOS users can still sign up on the web to save the extra $3. In that case, the new yearly subscription would save them 36 percent compared to signing up directly on iOS.

A Twitter Blue subscription offers a number of perks, including a blue "verified" checkmark, higher ranking replies, 60-minute video uploads and more. Users can also undo and edit tweets, customize app icons, themes and navigations, bookmark tweets and more. You'll need a phone number to sign up, and Twitter is supposed to verify your account to assure it's not fraudulent or fake - something it failed at recently.

The Elon Musk-owned social media network seems to need as many subscriptions as possible. According to a recent report on The Information, more than 500 of Twitter's advertisers have paused spending on the site, and daily revenue on January 17th was down 40 percent compared to last year.

In the first quarter of 2022 before Musk's acquisition was finalized, Twitter reported sales of $1.2 billion, with $1.1 billion of that in advertising, and subscriptions (plus other revenue) making up the rest.