Twitter Plans To Make Tweetdeck Subscription-Only In August

Twitter’s Tweetdeck has been a much loved feature for years, allowing users to customize the experience of reading the social media site with multiple columns. But Tweetdeck won’t be free for long. Twitter has announced that Tweetdeck is only available for Twitter Blue users starting within 30 days.

“We have just launched a new, improved version of TweetDeck. All users can continue to access their saved searches & workflows via tweetdeck.twitter.com by selecting ‘Try the new TweetDeck’ in the bottom left menu,” Twitter Support tweeted on Monday.

You have to scroll down to find the gist of the message. The subscription feature of Tweetdeck is coming soon. It was immediately criticised on the platform.

“In 30 days, users must be Verified to access TweetDeck,” Twitter Support tweeted.

Twitter will no longer verify anyone’s identity who has paid $8 per monthly for their “blue checkmark”. When Elon Musk bought the platform he decided to monetize the program, stripping “legacy” blue check marks and charging for the blue badge.

“omg a paywall for TWEETDECK?!” Washington Post journalist Gene ParkTwitter in response the news.

Some people thought it was strange that certain features, which were previously free, are now behind a paywall.

“Forcing people to pay for features that were previously free. People don’t want to pay for Blue unless you create value. Paywalling previously free features isn’t adding value, it will just drive people off the platform,” open source researcher Oliver Alexander tweeted.

Twitter’s fortunes have suffered in the last few months due to a series of decisions made by its billionaire founder. Even in the last few days, there were some strange decisions. For example, people without a Twitter account are no longer able to see tweets unless they create an account—a decision that will decrease the visibility of tweets that may be shared outside of the Twitter ecosystem.

Twitter also decided to “temporarily” limit the number of tweets anyone can read on a given day. That move was done in an effort to fight what Musk called “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation.” The limit on the number of tweets was originally just 600 for unverified users on Saturday, but has been expanded to an unknown number as of Monday. Musk is either stretching the truth when he says he wants to stop data scraping. Or if a solution was found in only two days.

Tweetdeck briefly worked as a way to circumvent Twitter’s new limits over the weekend, but that loophole was closed relatively quickly. This new rule is also causing many Twitter users to switch to competitors, like Bluesky. Bluesky’s founder Jack Dorsey founded Twitter. Bluesky actually had to temporarily stop signups at the weekend due to too much interest.

Meta may even launch its Twitter competitor Threads around mid-July. And the timing couldn’t be better for Facebook’s parent company, as Twitter seems to be suffering from countless unforced errors.

Musk hired NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino to take over as CEO of Twitter in early June but she’s been remarkably quiet over the weekend during what’s arguably the worst crisis at the social media company in years. It’s hard to imagine something worse for a social media platform than restricting the ability of users to actually use the site, but that’s exactly what happened, yet Yaccarino has been silent.

The Atlantic ran an article titled “Elon Musk Really Broke Twitter” on Monday comparing the decision to limit the number of tweets people can read to Costco creating a 12-item or less rule, or a 24-hour diner closing at 7 p.m.

Twitter’s automated system responded on Monday to questions with the poop emoji. Musk had set this up shortly after purchasing the site. Musk is 52 years old.