In October 2022, Elon Musk finally completed the takeover of Twitter in a deal worth USD 44 billion. He immediately fired a few of the top executives in that same month, an early sign that it wasn’t going to be business as usual at the social media giant.
In the five months that the richest man on Earth has been at the helm of the company, he has introduced radical changes including the firing of nearly three-quarters of the workforce as well as a few other key changes.
Here is a look at some of the outstanding changes that have happened at Twitter over the nearly half a year of the circus that we have been treated to.
Locking out third-party clients
The last time Twitter recorded a profit was in 2019. Fresh from spending billions of dollars on it, one of Elon Musk’s key objectives is to make the company profitable again.
Advertisements are a reliable way of generating income. However, users accessing the platform through third-party clients like Fenix, Twitterific and Tweetbot do not get served with ads, which means Twitter was theoretically leaving money on the table.
With this in mind, third-party clients’ API access was revoked early in the year, forcing users to go back to using Twitter’s official apps or its website where ads are served.
API access has now been reinstated in a limited manner and behind a paywall. This to a large extent is the end of resourceful and sometimes even funny bot accounts that would automatically do useful things for readers such as presenting a thread in a cluster-free way, downloading a video from the platform or even reporting on natural disasters such as earthquakes.
The introduction of Twitter Blue
Prior to Elon Musk’s takeover, the blue checkmark was used to indicate that the person behind the account was a notable person or entity. This, however, has changed with the introduction of Twitter Blue.
Twitter Blue is a paid subscription of $8 a month that gets you a blue checkmark as well as a few other benefits. Those that already had the blue checkmark before the introduction of Twitter Blue retained them, however, the description was changed to this, “This account is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable”
There are some conditions which an account must meet before they can be given a Twitter Blue checkmark including being from the following countries at the moment; U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the U.K., Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, India, Indonesia, and Brazil as well the account being more than 90 days old. [Update: Twitter Blue is now available in several more countries, Kenya included.]
In addition to the checkmark, there are some added benefits that come with the Twitter Blue subscription. These are:
- The ability to edit a tweet in a 30-minute window after publishing it.
- The ability to undo a tweet that has been sent before it is publicly available. Once the undo window passes, the tweet will have to be deleted in the usual manner.
- Group bookmarked tweets into private folders
- Get prioritized and have your account pushed to the top of replies, mentions and search
- Get early access to new features on the platform
- See 50% fewer ads than those on non-verified accounts
- Upload Full HD videos up to an hour long through the web or ten-minute-long videos when using the app.
- Have an NFT that you own as a profile picture. This will appear in a hex-shaped profile icon.
- Tweet super-long tweets of up to 4,000 characters, which is significantly longer than the original 280-character limit.
- Get access to a Reader Mode that pushes away the clatter when a Tweeter Blue subscriber wants to read a long thread.
The introduction of grey and gold ticks
Now, with the blue checkmarks no longer representing a notable entity, Twitter introduced the gold and grey ticks for brands and important government figures.
In Elon Musk’s own words, ‘Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.’
‘For you’ and ‘Following’
There are people who would rather just have the platform present tweets to them originating from the accounts they have followed. Then there are those who do not mind the Twitter algorithm presenting content from accounts that they might be interested in based on the topics they interact with.
To cater to these different preferences, Twitter’s home page now has two tabs on the top written ‘For you’ and ‘Following’ For you primarily shows tweets recommended by Twitter’s algorithm, while ‘Following’ displays content from the accounts that you follow. You can easily switch between the two depending on your mood.
The end of free SMS two-factor authentication
In a nutshell, two-factor authentication is the extra step you are required to take after keying in the correct password before you are allowed access to an account. For most people, this is normally keying in a code that you are sent to your verified mobile number.
Earlier this month, Twitter announced that users who are not subscribed to Twitter Blue will have two-factor authentication via SMS disabled from March 20. This change, however, locking a previously free service behind a paywall, has not gone down well with many people.
Twitter’s stand is that SMS two-factor authentication has been abused by bad actors and is costing the company $60 million each year.
Users now have to find other ways to implement 2FA. Google Authenticator is a viable third-party option, while other third-party password managers will get the job done as well, so use one that you feel most comfortable with and has good reviews.
All these changes have come about in a short five months. It goes without saying that Elon-led Twitter will have a few more changes before the year comes to an end in their pursuit of making the platform better in their eyes as well as profitable in the long run to offset the USD 44 billion spent on it.
