The growing social media platform Bluesky is apparently considering a paid subscription model that it’s calling Bluesky+. Would you pay?
The up-and-coming social media platform Bluesky appears to be considering a subscription option. TechCrunch took a look at what it calls a “mockup” of the subscription plan posted on GitHub. The mockup lists the subscription model as carrying the name Bluesky+.
The platform warns that the features listed in the mockup could change before it becomes available. But, TechCrunch suggests, what’s listed is at least what the platform’s developers must be considering. In all, the mockup lists eight features, five of which have a green checkmark and three add “Coming soon.”
The five which would come with the subscription — if you can trust the mockup — are:
- Bluesky+ Profile Badge (for verification)
- Custom App Icons
- Profile Customizations
- Higher Video Upload Limits
- Higher Quality Video Resolution
Of those, the main one I’d be interested in would be that first one.
Bluesky needs some kind of verification option
Yes, I railed against Elon Musk’s plan to take away legacy verification from what had been Twitter and allow anyone who subscribed to get a blue checkmark. But with Bluesky, the rapid influx of new users makes verification a necessary evil. The real question is what it will require to deliver the profile badge.
If it’s just a matter of handing over the monthly subscription without any kind of actual verification of identity, then the badge for Bluesky would be as meaningless as X’s badge. But I’ll reserve judgment until I see what their badge entails.
As for the other three features listed as coming soon, they include inline post translations, post analytics and bookmark folders.
What’s a subscription model worth?
If you can believe the mockup, users would pay $8 per month for Bluesky+. A yearly option at $72 would drop that monthly cost to just $6.
By comparison, X’s XPro also costs $8 per month, but the yearly cost is $84.
In the price war, Bluesky+ is the winner. I’d prefer a subscription under $50 per year.
But if they’re going to roll out “premium” features, two obvious options immediately come to mind.
The first is an edit function. Seriously, why can’t social media platforms offer a damned edit button? No matter how much we guard against it, an occasional typo happens. Sometimes, we even get unwanted help with typos thanks to the ever-popular autocorrect feature that will sometimes change something after we click the post button.
That kind of typo is out of the control of even the most dedicated typist. There should be something a poster can do other than delete and start over again.
The second is a scheduling feature. You used to be able to schedule posts on Facebook. But now, it’s impossible to schedule on any platform without going through a third-party app. Even if you could only schedule four or five posts at any one time, that’d still be better than none. We can’t spend every hour of every day on social media, you know.
Some of us, as hard as it may be to imagine, do have lives away from the computer. Go figure.
No… I see no value in it. I don’t pay for X either, simply because I don’t see the value. If Grok was as useful as ChatGPT, I would subscribe since I could drop ChatGPT Plus. I like X fine in general and it has been getting better for me since Musk took over.