In a bid to finally make Twitter Blue ‘worth it’, Twitter is turning TweetDeck – a much-loved platform amongst Twitter’s plebians – into a paid-for feature exclusive to those foolish enough to give the world’s richest man even more money. Twitter announced the change on Monday, confirming the feature will be locked behind a paywall in 30 days. Well, 29 now, but who’s counting?
Go Blue yourself
We have just launched a new, improved version of TweetDeck. All users can continue to access their saved searches & workflows via https://t.co/2WwL3hNVR2 by selecting “Try the new TweetDeck” in the bottom left menu.
Some notes on getting started and the future of the product…
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 3, 2023
Twitter’s announcement tweet starts off innocent enough, announcing the ‘new’ and improved TweetDeck layout and its subsequent features – or lack thereof. It’s not until you hit the bottom of the tweet that you’ll notice something isn’t quite right. “In 30 days, users must be Verified to access TweetDeck.”
Taking a service that was previously free, and adding it to Twitter Blue isn’t quite adding the value to the service that Twitter thinks it is. All it’s doing is taking away from the masses, and handing it to Twitter’s bourgeoisie, driving the rest into open rebellion. Or, more accurately, off the platform entirely. Possibly into the waiting arms of a new platform like the one Instagram is launching on Thursday.
Twitter’s announcement comes hot off the heels of its last big announcement, the temporary ‘rate limit’ that did wonders for the website’s user activity over the weekend.
Read More: Twitter could take a $250 million hit from the music industry
Guess we’ll go back to Yu-Gi-Oh! decks
Sure, we’re sad about the loss of TweetDeck. It was an invaluable (well… R1,520/year) tool that helped people, us included, monitor multiple aspects of the Twittersphere while also offering simpler ways to tweet en masse. It broke our hearts, actually. But we can’t pretend we don’t find it just a little bit funny that the people who actually pay for Twitter will be getting the so-called “new and improved” version of the tool.
TweetDeck users that sign into the platform will be given the choice to import all of their saved searches, workflows, columns and lists. Be warned, you’ll only have one chance to do so – because that’s the mark of a working service, you know – and afterwards, won’t be given the same luxuries and have to start from scratch.
And finally, if you were hoping to get back into TweetDeck via the Teams feature, you… can’t. It’s not gone forever mind you, but it has been temporarily disabled for a couple of weeks. Why? We wish we could tell you, but Musk plugged the company’s press@twitter.com address with poop. Seriously.
