Tweetdeck becoming Pay-to-Play in 30 days.

[CamCabbit]

Summary

 Tweetdeck will become unavailable to unverified users on August 2nd, 2023.

 

Quotes

Quote

- In 30 days, users must be Verified to access TweetDeck.

 

My thoughts

 A recent post by Twitter Support stated that Tweetdeck will be locked behind their "Verified User" paywall. This only allows verified users (who've paid their $8 a month) to use Tweetdeck. According to the tweet, this would become active in 30 days, or on August 2nd, 2023. Is this the straw that will break most unverified Twitter users?

Does LTT have a Mastodon instance?

 

Sources

 

 

[IkeaGnome]

What’s a TweetDeck and why was my first thought a Tech Deck? 

[CamCabbit]

11 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

What’s a TweetDeck and why was my first thought a Tech Deck? 

https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

It's basically an official widescreen, multicolumn view of Twitter. I've got mine set up to show multiple lists at the same time. It's what Mastodon's Advanced View is based on.

[CamCabbit]

And I just saw that the screenshot I took had a tweet from Emily about the Tweetdeck situation. Oh well. I didn't see anything here on the forum about the Pay-to-Play situation for Tweetdeck, so I guess I'll leave it up.

[Techstorm970]

Why did I think, "Oh no, not a Tweetdeck!" as if it was a new competitor to the Steam Deck???

[Franck]

21 hours ago, CamCabbit said:

It's basically an official widescreen, multicolumn view of Twitter. I've got mine set up to show multiple lists at the same time. It's what Mastodon's Advanced View is based on.

So they will make the user pay 8$ / month for a CSS file ?

[Doobeedoo]

Paying.. for this, and justifying it....oooofff.

[Brooksie359]

I mean I am not surprised they would do this tbh. It's not like this is a super necessary feature and to put it behind their membership is probably a good idea for increasing incentives. I do find it funny that nobody wants to pay for twitter but if you do use twitter alot I don't see why it's unreasonable to pay. I mean it's like YouTube for me where I watch enough YouTube to justify premium. If you use twitter alot then I don't see the issue with paying for the service. That being said if you don't use twitter often then yeah no reason to pay. I feel like we are coming to a point now where people are realizing that alot of tech companies and big websites are not profitable so I wouldn't be surprised if mote websites had to go this route in the future. 

[Erioch]

Oh no!

 

Anyway...

[Drazil100]

2 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I mean I am not surprised they would do this tbh. It's not like this is a super necessary feature and to put it behind their membership is probably a good idea for increasing incentives. I do find it funny that nobody wants to pay for twitter but if you do use twitter alot I don't see why it's unreasonable to pay. I mean it's like YouTube for me where I watch enough YouTube to justify premium. If you use twitter alot then I don't see the issue with paying for the service. That being said if you don't use twitter often then yeah no reason to pay. I feel like we are coming to a point now where people are realizing that alot of tech companies and big websites are not profitable so I wouldn't be surprised if mote websites had to go this route in the future. 

There is a difference between increasing incentives by adding features and increasing incentives by locking existing features behind a paywall. The latter is really done only when a company is either getting greedy or desperate (possibly both).

[goodtofufriday]

On 7/4/2023 at 9:02 AM, CamCabbit said:

https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

It's basically an official widescreen, multicolumn view of Twitter. I've got mine set up to show multiple lists at the same time. It's what Mastodon's Advanced View is based on.

Well that looks like an information nightmare overload. Why do you need to view this many things at once? 

 

Didn't even know what tweetdeck was till now. 

[suicidalfranco]

As Linus said in the last wan show, the entitlement is strong with this one

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Drazil100 said:

There is a difference between increasing incentives by adding features and increasing incentives by locking existing features behind a paywall. The latter is really done only when a company is either getting greedy or desperate (possibly both).

When a service that cost money to maintain operating and is currently not profitable I don't see how anyone is entitled to any existing features for free. Locking existing features behind a paywall certainly doesn't make the company greedy. Desperate? Probably but I don't see how that makes this move bad. Like i get that people don't like Elon and what he has done to twitter but its not like Twitter could continue down the path it was going. Something needed to be changed and unfortunately this might be one of them. 

[Drazil100]

2 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

When a service that cost money to maintain operating and is currently not profitable I don't see how anyone is entitled to any existing features for free. Locking existing features behind a paywall certainly doesn't make the company greedy. Desperate? Probably but I don't see how that makes this move bad. Like i get that people don't like Elon and what he has done to twitter but its not like Twitter could continue down the path it was going. Something needed to be changed and unfortunately this might be one of them. 

I am not arguing that I am entitled to these features or that twitter shouldn't lock features behind a paywall. I also have nothing against Elon. I think he is an idiot, but I have no investment in what happens to twitter, and see no satisfaction in watching Elon fail. The entire point I was trying to make is that there are 2 ways to increase incentive to pay for a product. One is by giving new features, the other is by charging more for the features you already have.

I don't know if this can be classified as a good or bad move yet, especially right after the rate limits were implemented. The fact that Twitter is doing both of these so close together means either that Twitter is in danger of going under, or Elon is pushing them too hard to become more profitable when they didn't need to be. Regardless of the reason, it does not inspire confidence. It shows that they are out of ideas on features they could add to their subscription service and are grasping at straws to try to increase revenue.

[Brooksie359]

8 hours ago, Drazil100 said:

I am not arguing that I am entitled to these features or that twitter shouldn't lock features behind a paywall. I also have nothing against Elon. I think he is an idiot, but I have no investment in what happens to twitter, and see no satisfaction in watching Elon fail. The entire point I was trying to make is that there are 2 ways to increase incentive to pay for a product. One is by giving new features, the other is by charging more for the features you already have.

I don't know if this can be classified as a good or bad move yet, especially right after the rate limits were implemented. The fact that Twitter is doing both of these so close together means either that Twitter is in danger of going under, or Elon is pushing them too hard to become more profitable when they didn't need to be. Regardless of the reason, it does not inspire confidence. It shows that they are out of ideas on features they could add to their subscription service and are grasping at straws to try to increase revenue.

Elon has gone on record that twitter is months away from bankruptcy. That was months ago so yeah I would say these measures are probably necessary. To say that he is pushing them hard to be profitable when they don't need to be is wild. Obviously a company needs to be profitable otherwise you can't keep the lights on. Twitter hasn't been profitable for a long time and unfortunately Elon was basically dumped with this unprofitable company and somehow needs to make it profitable in the matter of months or else the company goes under. I mean yeah you can criticize all you want but the fact is the company doesn't have money to create new features to incentivize paying for twitter. They gotta make due with what they have. 

[Drazil100]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

To say that he is pushing them hard to be profitable when they don't need to be is wild.

I was speaking hypothetically, not accusing. I don’t have all the evidence, it just has to be one or the other.
 

Until Twitter actually collapses we don’t necessarily know what is truth and what is fiction. It could legitimately be close to collapse, or he could be just saying it is to justify these unpopular changes and try to make his money back. Given that Twitter survived unprofitably for many years before Elon purchased it, I am not ready to rule out the possibility that he is exaggerating how bad the situation is. I am not saying this is the more likely option though. 

[Brooksie359]

36 minutes ago, Drazil100 said:

I was speaking hypothetically, not accusing. I don’t have all the evidence, it just has to be one or the other.
 

Until Twitter actually collapses we don’t necessarily know what is truth and what is fiction. It could legitimately be close to collapse, or he could be just saying it is to justify these unpopular changes and try to make his money back. Given that Twitter survived unprofitably for many years before Elon purchased it, I am not ready to rule out the possibility that he is exaggerating how bad the situation is. I am not saying this is the more likely option though. 

Why do you think twitter was trying to sell so bad and when Elon looked at the numbers he wanted to back out? Also the idea that twitter was fine for so long being unprofitable only works when you have investor money. Also doesn't help that part of the cost of twitter was purchased through loans that are now debts twitter is responsible for. I don't see a reason why Elon would lie about twitter being close to bankruptcy. Also these companies all have had the same exact issue. People invest because it's a really popular website with a ton of users which pays for the operating costs but that investment money at some point runs out and people want a return and then people realize these companies aren't profitable so people stop investing. This was a huge issue with esports where people invested a ton of money thinking it was the next big thing and salaries and costs skyrocketed because they had all of this investor moneh yet the profits were low so when investors figured this out they stopped investing and the profits from esports could no longer cover the salaries and other expenses. Honestly I think twitter was way overvalued and sold for way more than what it was worth. 

[TroyTakesPhotos]

My day job is in news, and having TweetDeck makes finding out information going on from local emergency services, other news outlets, etc. and having it broken up by category is invaluable.  Between this and rate limits affecting people's ability to get emergency information, it's very difficult to use Twitter for my job anymore.