According to a tweet, Twitter is officially launching its “new” version of TweetDeck for everyone from the Twitter support account, which is a step it had to take to mitigate some of the issues TweetDeck has been experiencing lately. The move comes with a potentially heartbreaking catch: TweetDeck will become a verified-only feature in 30 days, the account says, meaning you’ll have to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to use it.
According to two Twitter employees, all users will be forced to move to the new version, and those staffers also shared some minor clarifications about what’s going on with the old TweetDeck. For many on the old interface, TweetDeck has been useless lately; when I wrote this story, all my columns were just spinning with a “Loading…” message, and my colleagues also saw something similar.
While the blank columns popped up after Twitter started speed-limiting tweets, those speed limits don’t really cause the problems with the old TweetDeck, according to the Twitter staff. Instead, the contributors claim the problems are because Twitter removed outdated APIs to prevent data scraping.
Work to force the switch begins “this week”, said the employeeand in replies people beg that Twitter “Please do not.” I can’t blame them – I remember not liking the TweetDeck Preview when I tried it out in 2021, and neither did my colleague Sean Hollister. I don’t know how much the preview has changed now that it’s officially released, and I hope Twitter has improved it for the better, but I’m not optimistic; Twitter’s TweetDeck account hasn’t said a word since August. (And as I write this, that still hasn’t happened, despite Monday’s news.)
When reached for comment, Twitter’s press email automatically replied with a poop emoji, as it did since March.
Update July 3, 6:32 PM ET: Twitter is officially launching the new TweetDeck and making it a Twitter Blue-only feature.
