Twitter Blue expands to six new countries and brings back Spaces curation

Twitter is in a rush to make money, and in another potentially revenue-generating step, it's expanded the Twitter Blue subscription to six new countries. Paid plans are now available in Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, making a total of 12 regions that users can subscribe to.

The company is also launching a new Spaces tab with curated stations for live and recorded Spaces as well as podcasts. Users without a Twitter Blue subscription can already access the Spaces tab, but it mainly shows live audio sessions in progress.

Twitter is also bringing back Topic Stations which lists Spaces stations by topics. The company already started testing it in August before Musk took over. But for the past few months, Spaces has had almost no curation because of the layoffs. Now, the social network could rely on algorithms to group related real-time audio conversations.

The social network makes podcasts available only to Blue subscribers and "certain people on Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android apps". Podcasts were also integrated into Twitter in the pre-Musk era, but the company appears to be returning to work on some of those projects. Twitter said that initially there would be no way to search for podcasts. You will therefore have to listen to whatever the algorithm serves you.

Twitter Blue's expansion comes as no surprise as the company aims to generate more revenue in any way possible. Last month, the social media company allowed Android users to subscribe. On Thursday, Twitter announced it was ending free access to its API and rolling out a basic paid plan next week. Although the company didn't state the price, Elon Musk tweeted that the basic plans could cost $100 per month, which could be high for some developers, students, and independent researchers.

Although the company saw a drop in ad revenue, the good news for Musk is that many companies, including PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev, have reportedly pledged millions of dollars for Superbowl buyout ads on Twitter. Last month, the social network partnered with ad tech company DoubleVerify Integral Ad Science (IAS) to let marketers know if their ads appear alongside inappropriate tweets.