THE HELP DESK
A Look at X Premium+
by Sophia Guevara
Do you have an X (formerly Twitter) account? If so, you are probably aware of the free and paid accounts available to you as a user. I had been thinking about getting a subscription to X, as I thought that it would be nice to be able to edit posts instead of having to delete them and start over again if I made a mistake. In addition, I was looking forward to trying X’s AI product Grok. As of this writing, Grok is only available to those who subscribe to the Premium+ account.
SIGNING UP
I decided to give Premium+ a shot because it is just $16 a month or $168 a year and is the only tier offering no ads in the For You and Following timelines. (Premium is $8 a month or $84 a year, and Basic is $3 a month or $32 a year.) The subscription is on auto-renewal when you sign up, so you’ll need to cancel at least 24 hours in advance if you don’t want to keep it. Once you subscribe, you’ll see a window that requests you verify your account with a government-issued ID. You can start this process or skip it entirely. Premium+ subscribers can:
- Create posts, replies, and quotes that are up to 25,000 characters long
- Edit a post up to five times within an hour of posting or undo the post
- Organize bookmarks into folders
- Share videos that can be as long as 60 minutes on desktop and up to 10 minutes long on mobile
- Customize their profile
MORE PERKS
As a Premium+ subscriber, you’ll be able to access Communities, which connect people with similar interests (see Figure 1). I looked for library-focused communities and found that some existed. A user must ask to join a community before being accepted. Premium+ subscribers also have access to Grok, which has two modes to choose from: Fun Mode and Regular Mode (see Figure 2). The first question I submitted using Regular Mode was about the road conditions in my city. Grok required me to name the specific location. I followed up with a question asking what the weather was like that day, and I did not have to type in my city’s name again. In Fun Mode, I typed in the same question about the weather. The response was shorter, and some posts (aka tweets) were included that referenced the weather. I had the option to follow the accounts of the tweets that were provided in reference to my question.
When it comes to the news features and settings, Premium+ subscribers can choose to see Top Articles, which are the most-shared articles from the people they follow. In addition, Premium+ subscribers can develop a subscription option for others to pay to see the content they produce. The requirements for this option include getting verified, having at least 500 followers, being at least 18 years old, and being active in the last 30 days. There is also an option to join ads revenue sharing. In order to participate, you’ll need to connect to a Stripe account, which offers a suite of payment and financial products. |
Sophia Guevara received both her M.L.I.S. and master of public
administration degrees from Wayne State University. She has also
been published in Computers in Libraries, Online Searcher, and Information Outlook. Send your comments
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