The Twitter app has been updated with new Twitter Blue features that apparently aren’t available to everyone yet

Twitter app users will notice an update to the official iOS app starting this weekend that highlights some of the changes coming to Twitter Blue, the social media platform’s premium subscription service designed to provide users with advanced features for a monthly fee.

Version 9.34.3 of the Twitter app comes with the following changelog:

Starting today, we’re adding great new features to Twitter Blue, and we’ll be adding more soon.

Get Twitter Blue for $7.99 per month when you sign up now Blue Check: Power for the People: Your account will receive a blue check, as will the celebrities, companies, and politicians you already follow.

Coming soon… – Half the Ads and Better: As you support Twitter in the fight against bots, we’ll reward you with half the ads and make them twice as relevant. – Post longer videos: You can finally post longer videos on Twitter. – Priority ranking for quality content: Your content will be prioritized in replies, mentions and searches. This helps reduce the visibility of fraud, spam, and bots.

Availability: Twitter Blue with verification is currently available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

While the Twitter app’s changelog hints that the latest changes to Twitter Blue are now taking effect after the update, many quickly discovered after subscribing to Twitter Blue that this was not the case. This conclusion was later confirmed by Esther Crawford, a member of the early product development team on Twitter, who said the following:

The new Blue hasn’t launched yet – the sprint to our launch is ongoing, but some people may see us making updates because we’re testing and making changes in real time. The team is legendary. New blue… soon!

Based on the information we have so far, Twitter Blue still costs users $4.99 per month and doesn’t include account verification yet – at least not for everyone yet. Soon, the price of a Twitter Blue subscription will increase to $7.99 per month and will include account verification for anyone who subscribes, in addition to the other benefits it offers, including:

• Halve the number of ads displayed in a user’s News Feed and ensure they are of higher quality.
• Unlock the ability to upload longer video files in 1080p quality on Twitter.
• Support for prioritizing “quality”content posted by Twitter Blue users so that more people can see it.

Recently, Twitter has become a controversial topic after its acquisition by the head of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk. One of Musk’s top priorities since acquiring Twitter has been transforming the platform in line with his vision of a safe haven for online free speech.

The Twitter changelog indicating that these new Twitter Blue features will be available “starting today”despite being only available to a small test group and not to the general public is sure to add fuel to the existing controversy.

It is currently unknown when Twitter plans to bring the $7.99 USD revamped Twitter Blue service with account verification to its masses. After updating the app, many users started to see the updated Twitter Blue UI (top, left), but it returned to the original UI (top, right) after a few hours.

Have you updated to the latest version of Twitter and do you plan to subscribe to the new Twitter Blue service when it launches? Discuss in the comments.