Twitter users are reporting that the option to sign up for the company’s new $7.99 subscription service, Twitter Blue, disappeared from the platform’s iOS app just days after the service launched.
You could previously subscribe to Twitter Blue from the sidebar in the iOS app (the service has yet to launch for Android users), but users reported this morning that the option is gone. For those for whom the link is still available, attempting to log in will only return an error message. “Thank you for your interest!” there is. “Twitter Blue will be available in your country in the future. Come back later.”
It’s not clear why users can’t sign up for Twitter Blue. Twitter could intentionally interrupt access to the service while dealing with the chaos its launch has caused (numerous users have bought verification to impersonate brands and celebrities). Or the system may have collapsed unintentionally.
Since Elon Musk massively fired Twitter staff earlier this week, many people have — including current employees — have predicted that the service is at an increasing risk of downtime as minor errors pile up and go unaddressed and the remaining company staff are pushed to their limits by stress, overwork and a mandate to return to the office in person.
The launch itself of Twitter Blue was incredibly chaotic, with Twitter trying to offset the confusing wave of counterfeits with the launch of another verification badge – a gray check mark that marks accounts as ‘official’. The company launched this feature, removed it, and relaunched it, all in the span of a few days. In this context, the fact that Twitter Blue logins have disappeared from the company’s iOS app is nothing more than normal – most of the things happening to Twitter right now come out of the blue.
