Embattled social media platform Twitter is struggling to regain lost fandom following billionaire investor Elon Musk’s takeover. The efforts of Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, to win back the favor of corporates that stopped advertising on the platform are also going down the drain. On July 1, Musk announced a temporary cap on the number of tweets a user could read each day. As per the limits, new unverified users can read 500 posts, old unverified users can read 1,000 tweets, and verified users can read up to 10,000 posts per day. The negative consequence of the new cap is that it prevents users from viewing tweets within advertisements once the limit is reached. This discourages corporations from using and advertising on the platform.
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Musk claims the step is taken to avoid “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation” by third-party platforms, as multiple reports stated. Companies undertaking research and training of artificial intelligence (AI) models habitually scrape vast amounts of data from such sites to feed their models. Musk stated that these were affecting the speed and causing traffic congestion on the microblogging site.
New and Improved TweetDeck
Also, Musk announced the launch of a new and improved version of TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a tool that is used to seamlessly manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule tweets for future posts, and more. A user will have to be verified in order to use TweetDeck, the social media platform said. The new rule will be effective in the next 30 days. However, it remains to be seen if Twitter plans to charge users for using this tool in the future, which could open up a new source of revenue for the site. Businesses often use TweetDeck to monitor content, but they may not be willing to pay for the service.
Experts have cautioned that Musk’s extreme interference in Twitter’s functioning could ruin newly appointed CEO Yaccarino’s efforts to turn around the platform and win back its lost glory. Yaccarino comes with heaps of experience in the advertising sector and a strong network that could be leveraged to Twitter’s benefit. On the other side, Musk’s shenanigans have often been cited as a reason for the ill fate of Twitter. Though Musk has proven to successfully steer several businesses, including space exploration company SpaceX and electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Twitter needs the undivided attention of a valiant leader to pull it through the current crisis.
