Twitter AKA X is locking one of its best features behind a paywall. Twitter is one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet, but its reputation has suffered a lot in the last year. At the end of 2022, Elon Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion and immediately began shaping it to fit his vision of the site. This included sweeping changes to policies, firing over half of the company, making previously free features paid features, and much more. Twitter also eventually rebranded to X, a name that Elon Musk has been chasing for decades in an effort to create an “all-in-one” type of app with banking, social media, and more.
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As Musk attempts to pivot Twitter on a path to sustainable profitability, he has tried to make Twitter Blue more lucrative. Now, Twitter Blue is also rebranding to X Premium. As part of this, it will also rebrand Tweetdeck to X Pro. Tweetdeck is a service that users like companies, marketing agencies, creators, and others with multiple Twitter accounts (or just those who have really specific needs from Twitter) can utilize. You can manage multiple accounts with ease, set up multiple feeds on one screen to allow you to multitask and absorb information quite rapidly, and more. It’s been a tremendously helpful feature for years and has always been free. Now, Tweetdeck/X Pro is becoming a paid feature. As reported by CNBC, the service has now been swallowed up under the Twitter subscription service, meaning you’ll have to pay an annual fee if you want to use it now.
It seems this may only impact Twitter’s new version of Tweetdeck, as the old version still seems to be working just fine for those who use it. However, it wouldn’t be surprising if the old version gets shut down in favor of this new one as a way to push more users to subscribing to Twitter Blue or X Premium.
What do you think of Twitter paywalling Tweetdeck? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
