Reports that Twitter Inc. is considering some sort of paid subscription service date back as far as 2017 and more recently to July, but according to a new report over the weekend, a paid version of Twitter may be be coming later this year.

According to researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter is planning a $2.99-a-month subscription service called “Twitter Blue” that includes the ability to undo tweets and a service called Collections.

Twitter is calling their upcoming Subscription Service “Twitter Blue”, priced at $2.99/month for now, including paid features like:

Undo Tweets: https://t.co/CrqnzIPcOH

Collections: https://t.co/qfFfAXHp1o pic.twitter.com/yyMStpCkpr

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 15, 2021

Collections will allow users to save and organize their favorite tweets into collections to find them later. Undo tweets appear to be similar to Gmail’s undo-send feature, although the utility is not entirely clear. Unless it’s specifically referring to direct messages, users already have the ability to delete tweets.

Wong went on to suggest that Twitter is also working on a tiered subscription pricing model, with higher tiers having more paid features than lower ones. For example, higher-priced tiers could enjoy what Wong describes as “premium experiences” such as a clutter-free news reading experience. That suggests that Twitter will offer it, either directly or through the technology behind Scroll, a web content reading platform it acquired May 4, as part of a higher subscription tier.

Indeed, the likelihood that Scroll could be part of a broader Twitter subscription service was mentioned by Tony Haile, the former chief executive officer of Scroll, when the acquisition was announced.

I’m so excited to say that Twitter is acquiring @tryscroll! We’ll be going into private beta as we integrate into a broader Twitter subscription later in the year. https://t.co/KUJh8d6HJR Here’s why… pic.twitter.com/SnY3ew5Tne

— Tony Haile (@arctictony) May 4, 2021

Timing on Twitter’s paid subscription services is not known. Wong goes on to describe Twitter Blue as a work in progress and not final, including the name, pricing and feature set.

Not mentioned by Wong but also a possibility as part of the premium option could be Revue, a Substack Inc. competitor that Twitter acquired in January that enables writers to publish email newsletters and sell subscriptions. Twitter has already made the Pro version of Revue available for free to creators, so it could be that Twitter Blue subscribers obtain access to paid Revue emails from those creators as part of a potential bundle or similar.

After struggling for many years to be profitable, Twitter Inc. in more recent times delivered regular profits. In the first quarter, Twitter booked a profit of 16 cents per share on revenue of $1.04 billion.

That said, the company has long been looking at additional ways to increase its revenue which is highly reliant — just under 90% of the first quarter — on advertising. A subscription service would give Twitter a way to diversify its revenue.

Image: Shawn Campbell/Flickr