Would An X Premium free trial option make the platform a thousand times worse?

X (Formerly Twitter) users could eventually experience the platform's premium features through a free trial.

The account X Updates Radar posted a screenshot of code suggesting a free trial of X Premium could become available at some point. Such a free trial would open up access to the subscription's perks for no cost for a limited time.

X Premium -- formerly known as Twitter Blue before the platform rebranded in July 2023 -- offers users a collection of perks in exchange for a monthly fee. The X platform can still be used for free, but many of its features remain or have been moved behind a paywall.

Subscribing to X Premium unlocks features such as being able to edit posts, publish posts containing more than the standard 280 characters, uploading longer videos, and receiving a blue checkmark next to a user's display name. The middle tier of X Premium costs $8 a month or $84 per year.

While offering X users a free trial of these features may sound like a good idea from a marketing standpoint, having access to Premium for free -- even for a very short amount of time -- could undo the whole original intended purpose of a subscription option.

According to X's owner, locking many of the platform's features behind a paywall was originally intended to deter bot accounts from running wild on users' feeds. Theoretically, a free trial would allow accounts like these to create accounts and access normally paywalled features without having to pay for them.

From a business perspective, however, offering free trials might make sense if the platform intends to attempt to increase its revenue and keep users engaged. Free trials don't always succeed in converting free users to paid ones, but X Premium does contain features many long-time users yearn for. The ability to edit tweets was on many people's unwritten wishlists for years before the ability became accessible to paying customers.

Whether or not X moves forward with a free trial "trial" ultimately depends on the owner's ultimate end goal for the platform.