Elon Musk-owned social network X, formerly Twitter, has made X Pro — which was previously known as TweetDeck — a subscriber-only product.
Several users noted on the platform that while trying to access TweetDeck they were shown a popup prompting them to buy a Blue subscription.
The move isn’t entirely surprising, as on July 3, the company said that within 30 days TweetDeck would be accessible to only verified users. Like a lot of Musk promised timelines, the social network got delayed in implementing the new rule by a few days.
Plenty of newsrooms, individual journalists, researchers and social media consultants used TweetDeck — which was acquired by Twitter in a $40 million deal in 2011 — to track multiple lists and trends on Twitter/X. They will now have to pay up to keep using the tool.
For the past few years, TweetDeck felt like an ignored product. The previous management of the social network started testing a new version of the tool in 2021, but it wasn’t rolled out to a wider audience. In June 2022, the company shut down TweetDeck’s Mac client.
Under Musk, X has tried to make its subscription attractive with many offerings. Apart from the verification mark, which you can hide now, it rolled out the ability to post longer text and videos, fewer ads, access to encryption in DMs and ad revenue sharing.
Originally published at techcrunch.com
