High time this happened.
The block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 23, 2024
Search results for: “twitter”
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Test Twitter 2
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Twitter Test
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Join us in our quest to bring back sight to those who have lost it. Apply to our Patient Registry and openings on our career page https://t.co/abBMTdv7Rh
— Neuralink (@neuralink) September 17, 2024
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Meta May Build a Twitter Alternative
Meta may be looking to build a Twitter alternative, taking advantage of the turmoil surrounding the company since Elon Musk’s takeover.
Meta and Twitter are two of the biggest and oldest social media platforms. Twitter was recently purchased by Musk and has been in a near-constant state of turmoil since. Meta evidently sees an opportunity to capitalize on Twitter’s troubles and offer an alternative.
“We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates,” the company told BBC News.
“We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”
Only time will tell if Meta launches a Twitter rival. If it does, however, it would be well-poised to significant traction.
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Twitter Experiences More Outages
Perhaps laying off a large portion of Twitter’s technical staff wasn’t such a good idea, with the platform experience yet another outage.
Elon Musk has been slashing Twitter’s headcount since taking over the company. Unfortunately, it looks like the cuts may be cutting into the company’s ability to operate.
According to BBC News, the company experienced technical issues for the second time in a week. Users experienced errors when clicking links in tweets. In fact, the problem was bad enough that Bloomberg posted a link to its coverage saying: “if you can click this link, Twitter’s fixed its bug.”
Musk took the opportunity to blame the platform’s ‘brittleness.’
Interestingly, as BBC points out, while Twitter certainly had issues prior to Musk’s takeover, there has been a marked increase since the acquisition.
“It started shortly before the Musk takeover itself,” Alp Toker, director of internet outage tracker NetBlocks, told the outlet. “The main spike has happened after the takeover, with four to five incidents in a month – which was comparable to what used to happen in a year.”
It’s a safe bet that eliminating such a large percentage of the company’s staff may be a factor.
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Twitter Blue Is Now Available in More Than 20 Countries
Twitter Blue has undergone a major expansion, with the service now available in more than 20 European countries.
Twitter Blue is the social media platform’s service that provides a number of major features not available to free users. Those features include the ability to edit tweets, post 60-minute videos, and post up to 4,000 character tweets.
According to TechCrunch, the company has expanded the service to 20+ countries, including “Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus.”
The expansion is a clear effort to help the platform convert users to paid accounts. Since Twitter started charging $8/mo for the service, it hasn’t exactly been a hit, with reports indicating it has less than 300,000 subscribers.
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Twitter Payments Head Esther Crawford Has Been Laid Off
The carnage at Twitter continues, with Twitter Payments head Esther Crawford laid off, along with most of her team.
Esther Crawford was head of Twitter Payments, putting her in charge of Twitter Blue. According to Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer, Crawford is the latest to be purged from Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover.
Crawford’s departure is especially surprising since she was viewed as a Musk loyalist. in fact, she was one of those employees that answered Musk’s call to fully commit to the company.
The Verge’s Alex Heath says the layoff extends to most of “product org.”
Crawford’s departure makes one thing crystal clear: No one is safe in Musk’s Twitter.
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Twitter Blue Users Can Now Tweet 4,000 Characters
Twitter Blue users received a major new feature today, with the tweet character limit raised to 4,000.
Twitter has always strictly held to short posts, limiting users to 140 characters before eventually expanding to 280. While it has helped keep Twitter in the “micro blogging” territory, it also leads to long threads of multiple posts in an effort to share more in-depth information.
The company is now making it easier to do that…at least for Twitter Blue Users:
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Twitter Charging Businesses $1,000 to Keep Gold Verification
Twitter is reportedly implementing another major change, one that would see it charge $1,000 for businesses to maintain their gold verification.
Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the company has been looking for new ways to monetize its platform. According to Matt Navarra, Social Media Consultant, the company is already contacting businesses to tell them it will cost $1,000 to keep their gold verified status. In addition, it will cost $50 per month for each affiliate account.
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Deadbeat Company? Twitter Faces New Lawsuit for Unpaid Bill
Twitter has defaulted on another bill, this time for Innisfree M&A Incorporated, the company that advised it during Elon Musk’s purchase.
According to The New York Times, Innisfree has sued Twitter in the New York Supreme Court for $1.9 million, which it says the company owes it for advisory services during Musk’s buyout.
“As of December 23, 2022, Twitter remains in default of its obligations to Innisfree under the agreement in an amount of not less than $1,902,788.03,” the lawsuit says.
Since Musk’s purchase, Twitter has been defaulting on multiple financial obligations. One of the company’s landlords in California sued Twitter for not paying $136,250 in rent it owes.
Musk has also failed to pay severance packages to fired executives, and Twitter has been sued for not paying a private jet company for executive flights.
At the rate Twitter is going, it’s quickly earning the reputation of a deadbeat company. Third-parties companies do business with it at their own peril.
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Twitter Is Killing Its Free API, Will Charge Devs February 9
Twitter’s controversial decisions under owner Elon Musk just keep on coming, with the platform killing off its free developer API.
Twitter’s API is used for a number of things, including engaging bots and research. The company has decided it will no longer provide free access, with plans to start charging developers February 9.
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead
Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev), February 2, 2023
Needless to say, the news is not going over well, with many calling out Twitter for harming the very devs that help add value to the platform.
Developer Tom Coates was one such voice:
*”Short version: (1) Developers add value to Twitter by helping people create content. They add value to the core service; (2) Having said that, it is not unreasonable to want to find a way to charge those developers who extract more value than they contribute; (3) However, one week’s notice and no indication of pricing shows Twitter is chaotic and unreliable. No one’s going to build a business on that; (4) So you’re basically just shutting down the API and causing massive damage to Twitter in the most labour intensive way possible.”*
Coates concluded by saying: “This is dumb.”
Twitter may be hurting financially, but it’s hard to fathom how this is the right move. Mastodon has already gained a significant user base from Twitter’s previous decisions. Making it difficult for people to engage with the platform will only driver Twitter’s users elsewhere.
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Twitter Officially Changes TOS to Ban Third-Party Clients
Twitter has finally broke its silence — sort of — on why third-party clients are not working, changing its TOS to ban them.
Twitter caused an uproar when popular third-party clients stopped working without explanation. Twitterrific even shut down as a result, saying that’s Twitter’s complete lack of communication on the issue made it “a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.”
In the aftermath, Twitter has finally clarified, although not in an official announcement, press release, or anything else that would help the company save face. Instead, it has quietly updated its TOS to ban third-party apps.
The relevant portion specifically bans “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”
Clearly, the platform views third-party clients as a threat to its advertising revenue, since many of them do not display ads, and is well within its rights to make such a change.
Nonetheless, the company should have informed developers of the change, rather than making it unannounced and leaving everyone in limbo.
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Twitter API Changes Kill Twitterrific
The Iconfactory has announced it is discontinuing Twitterrific following a Twitter API change that killed the app.
Users began noticing in mid-January that some of their favorite Twitter clients were no longer working, with at least one developer confirming the issue. At the time, no one knew if it was an accidental error with the Twitter APIs, or if the platform was targeting third-party clients. Ultimately, it proved to be the latter and Twitterrific is the first confirmed victim.
In a blog post announcing the app’s demise, The Iconfactory makes clear that they did not want to end support for Twitterrific, but that they have no choice given Twitter’s complete lack of communication on the matter.
A sentence that none of us wanted to write, but have long felt would need to be written someday. We didn’t expect to be writing it so soon, though, and certainly not without having had time to notify you that it was coming. We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.
Those sentences speak volumes. An app that has existed since 2007 is forced to shut down because of an unannounced and undocumented change. What’s more, the company behind the app says it no longer views Twitter as trustworthy.
The news is also further evidence of the abject failure that has been Elon Musk’s tenure. Under his leadership, the company has refused to honor its rental agreements, suspended journalists’ accounts for posting critical articles, laid off thousands of employees, repeatedly threatened bankruptcy, and now helped kill one of the oldest Twitter clients without even bothering to explain why.
Musk may have once been Silicon Valley’s golden boy, but the mercurial CEO is adding another skill to his resume: showing how NOT to run a company.
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Twitter Intentionally Disabled Some Third-Party Clients
In the wake of revelations that some third-party Twitter clients were having trouble authenticating, it appears Twitter actively disabled them.
Users began noticing several days ago that some popular third-party Twitter apps were no longer able to connect. Paul Haddad, one of Tweetbot’s creators, confirmed the issue but did know whether it was an accidental issue with Twitter’s API or whether some apps were being targeted.
According to The Information, it appears Tweetbot and other apps are being targeted. The outlet saw internal Twitter communications that confirmed the affected apps were specifically disabled, although there’s still no indication as to why they were targeted.
9to5Google theorizes Twitter may be killing off third-party clients since they don’t contribute to the platform’s ad revenue. The issues with third-party clients coincides with a marked increase in ads in the official app and when browsing the website.
If Twitter really is killing off third-party clients, users could end up losing some of the best ways to interact with the platform.
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Third-Party Twitter Apps Down, Company Is Silent
A number of third-party Twitter apps appear to be down, and the developers are not receiving any feedback from Twitter.
Users started noticing that popular Twitter apps were no longer able to authenticate. A user, Casey Newton, posted on Mastodon after experiencing the problem with Tweetbot. Tweetbot creator Paul Haddad responded, confirming the issue.
@caseynewton multiple 3rd party clients, no communication as to if its a bug or …
Paul Haddad, (@paul@tapbots.social), January 12, 2023
As subsequent posts show, not all third-party apps are down, leading to some concern that specific apps are being targeted.
Until Twitter weighs in, developers and users will likely remain in the dark.
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Medium Throws Its Weight Behind Twitter Rival Mastodon
Medium has announced it is creating its own Mastodon instance, embracing what has emerged as a viable rival to Twitter.
Mastodon is an open source microblogging platform, very similar to Twitter in most respects. One big difference is how people sign up. Rather than a centralized server, companies and organizations can host their own instance, or Mastodon server, to sponsor communities of like-minded individuals. Once a person signs up, however, they can follow and interact with users across all the various instances, as part of what’s known as the “Fediverse.”
Medium has decided to host its own Mastodon instance, seeing the open source network as a positive development in the social media space.
Today, Medium is launching a Mastodon instance at me.dm to help our authors, publications and readers find a home in the fediverse. Mastodon is an emerging force for good in social media and we are excited to join this community.
Mastodon saw a huge uptick in traffic following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. While the platform has lost some of those gains in recent weeks, it still stands as the best alternative to Twitter. As more companies embrace it, Mastodon could one day become a far better option than Twitter in every respect.
For the latest tech news, you can follow this writer on Mastodon here: https://journa.host/@mattmilano
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Twitter Ad Engineers Get the Axe
Twitter ad engineers are the latest to be laid off, an odd choice given Elon Musk’s determination to improve ad revenue.
Twitter has engaged in a number of layoffs since Musk bought the company, as the new CEO has worked to slash costs in the interest of profitability. One of the major challenges the company has faced is the loss of advertisers over some of Musk’s more controversial decisions.
Given Musk’s need to gain and keep new advertisers, one would think that ad engineers would be the one jobs safe from layoffs. Unfortunately, according to The Information, that is not the case, with some 40 ad engineers and data scientists being laid off.
The layoffs targeted areas that Twitter’s leadership considers to be failing, such as the ads product, and unimportant, such as data science, the person said. Twitter’s ad revenue has reportedly plunged in recent months, as advertisers respond to Elon Musk’s loosening of rules around content moderation and the general chaos as Musk shakes up the company.
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Twitter Will Allow Political Ads On the Platform
Twitter is doing an about-face, relaxing its stance on political ads to be more aligned with television.
Twitter has had a policy of no political ads for some time, but the company is struggling to keep advertisers following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. The company’s Safety Account announced the change in a tweet:
Moving forward, we will align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets. As with all policy changes, we will first ensure that our approach to reviewing and approving content protects people on Twitter. We’ll share more details as this work progresses.
Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety), January 3, 2023
Anyone who previously looked to the platform as a way to escape the mind-numbing onslaught of political ads on TV now have one more reason to make the move to Mastodon.
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California Landlord Sues Twitter for Not Paying Rent
California Property Trust is suing Twitter for $136,250, saying the company has stopped honoring its rental agreement.
Since buying the company, Elon Musk has been aggressively cutting costs and scaling back expenses. Unfortunately, one of the ways he has been doing that is by reneging on agreements and leaving bills unpaid.
According to Engadget, Twitter stopped paying rent, leaving California Property Trust little choice but to sue in order to get paid. This isn’t the only instance of Twitter defaulting on its rental agreements, with the company reportedly defaulting on agreements for all of its global offices.
Similarly, Twitter is also being sued for refusing to pay for charter flights Musk took in his first days at Twitter..
The news is just the latest example of Musk’s erratic behavior since taking over the social media company.
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Twitter Goes Down, Musk Says ‘Works for Me’
Twitter experienced its first major outage since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, although the new CEO did little to reassure users.
Downdetector.com reported a major outage Wednesday evening, with more than 10,000 reports from users coming in. Many were quick to point out that this eventuality was not hard to predict, given how many people the company laid off in recent weeks. People feared the reduced workforce might struggle to keep the platform operational.
For his part, Musk seemed unconcerned.
While this may be the first major outage under Musk’s ownership, but only time will tell if this is a one-off or becomes a regular occurrence.
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Elon Musk Will Resign As Twitter CEO
Following a poll in which he asked users if he should resign as CEO, Musk has said he will abide by the results and resign.
Musk has always been a big fan of Twitter polls, although he may not have been prepared for the results of his latest one. The CEO asked users if he should resign as CEO, and the majority of respondents voted “yes.”
The controversial CEO has now said he will resign and look for a replacement.
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Tesla May Be the Reason for Musk’s Twitter CEO Poll
In the wake of a poll where Elon Musk asked if he should resign as Twitter CEO, some are speculating that Tesla is the reason.
Musk posted the poll regarding his status as Twitter CEO, promising to abide by the results. The poll ended with 57.5% voting that Musk should resign. While Musk has been noticeably silent since the poll closed, there’s reason to believe Tesla may have been the ultimate reason for him posing the question in the first place.
Musk has been under fire for essentially leaving Tesla leaderless since his purchase of Twitter. One of the largest individual Tesla shareholders went so far as to call for the board to replace Musk as CEO, saying “Elon abandoned Tesla.”
Some believe the poll could be Musk’s exit strategy or, more accurately, Tesla’s exit strategy for Musk.
As Wu points out, if the Tesla board exerted pressure on Musk, the poll would be a way for him to return to his main job in a way that saves face.