Names have been changing in recent months. Twitter is no longer Twitter, it’s X. Tweetdeck is XPro. Twitter Blue is X Premium, and that’s caused a few interesting questions when it has turned up on credit card statements. But you’d better be ready for that conversation if you’d like to keep using Tweetdeck. Whatever it’s called now.

Tweetdeck (XPro) has long been expected to turn paid-for, even before Elon Musk entered the picture. But while Twitter only ever threatened, it seems that X has officially made the jump. Up till now, you may or may not have still had access to the service without handing over some monthly money. If so, that’s about to change. Hard.

Time to go XPro

It’s not a surprise at all unless you haven’t been paying attention. The service said last month that this would happen. The only surprising thing about it is that it’s taken this long to kick in. But kick in it has. Attempt to access your old Tweetdeck URL without the required flag on your account and you’ll be redirected to your Twitter profile and greeted with a new popup explaining how much better life would be if you’d just give Elon Musk’s latest venture a modest sum of money every year.

It’s not explicit about how you’ll need to hand over cash in order to use Tweetde– er… XPro but that’s very much the reality. If you’ve been sitting on the fence and watching the blue checkmarks and the rest of the platform have arguments, it may finally be time to pick a side. Or you could just switch to using the standard interface, like some sort of poor person. That’s also an option.