Twitter has announced the launch of a new and improved TweetDeck. The service, which can be called a power user version of Twitter, is getting a host of changes to meet the demands of power users. But the biggest and most heartwrenching change is that it will not be free anymore. You will need to pay, i.e., subscribe to Twitter Blue, to use TweetDeck.
Originally an independent app, TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter in May 2011. In July 2021, the company announced a major overhaul of the platform. But this update remained in preview for about two years as the social network saw high-profile privatization, with billionaire Elon Musk purchasing it for $44 billion last year. After a lengthy delay, the big TweetDeck overhaul is finally here.
According to Twitter Support, TweetDeck now supports “full composer functionality.” You get Spaces, video docking, polls, and much more. Teams functionality is “temporarily unavailable” but will arrive soon. Existing users will not lose their saved searches, lists, and columns. A prompt that appears on loading the new app for the first time will let them bring in their existing settings.
Unfortunately, this update adds a paywall to TweetDeck. The app will be free for the first 30 days but will require a Twitter Blue subscription after that. This is a massive letdown but in line with the company’s recent push to sell Blue to more people. It has imposed limits on the number of tweets users can see. New unverified users can see 500 tweets in a day while existing users can see 1,000 tweets. With a Blue subscription, that limit goes up to 10,000 tweets.
Twitter will force all users to the new TweetDeck
Twitter users can access the new TweetDeck on the web by visiting tweetdeck.twitter.com. While the old interface is still available, the company will force everyone to the new version. This ensures that they cannot bypass the Blue requirement after a month. “We’re working on migrating everyone to the preview version,” a Twitter employee said (via), citing that the legacy TweetDeck is having some problems.
These problems cropped up after Twitter announced the read limits. But another employee confirmed that those limits don’t have anything to do with TweetDeck issues. Instead, users are facing problems because the company has removed the legacy APIs to reduce data scraping. This change is probably blocking old tweets from showing up in Google Search results. Twitter results in web searches have dropped drastically in recent days.
2023-07-04 15:05:08