Recent Twitter modifications pose problems for users, say analysts

Some users on microblogging site Twitter are shifting to third-party apps since the company has made verification necessary within 30 days for accessing TweetDeck, a move which industry watchers believe could give an edge to rival platforms.

Since the removal of Teams feature from the Elon Musk-led app, reported outages and a number of changes announced, users have been taking to the platform to report issues of increased advertisements and appearances of blocked and muted accounts on their Twitter feed.

A user tweeted, "Twitter just has too many ads and now you're locking Tweet Deck behind a paywall and limiting the number of tweets I can read in a day... unless I pay."

"If we're going to be rate-limited based on view count, why am I forced to view accounts I blocked?," another user tweeted.

Heads of enterprise technology platforms said that their work has been impacted due to the changes over the past 3-4 months on Twitter.

"We have to switch screens and use third party tools for quick analysis and tracking," MD of Edelman Digital Kunal Arora said.

Delhi-based creative media agency Schbang's co-founder and CEO Akshay Gurnani believes that the verification criteria will result in a lot of brands and users moving off Twitter.

Experts weigh in on the impact of changes to TweetDeck for users and businesses.

"Monetising TweetDeck can reduce unnecessary trends created by spam accounts, but it will also change the way corporates and political organisations control trends, impacting content consumption for Twitter users," said Akhilesh Shukla, CEO of Messy Desk Media, the parent company of enterprise technology platform TechShots.

Mumbai-based advertising agency Campaign Masters project head Riyaz Ahmed said that introducing ads or paid analytics could help businesses reach more people.

"This could make TweetDeck more useful and generate more income," Ahmed added.

Some users also reported about being able to access tweets on the web without logging in, a feature which was recently rolled back. This development coincides with the launch of Meta Threads.

"Twitter's recent abrupt modifications have unsettled some of its user base and created opportunities for new contenders," said Prabhu Ram, head of Industry Intelligence Group at marketing consultancy CyberMedia Research.

Mumbai-based digital marketing agency Ethinos founder and MD Siddharth Hedge feels that Twitter is experimenting with different ways of monetisation. 

"Twitter was never able to monetise the way Meta, Google, Snap, and LinkedIn managed to," he added.

Facebook-parent Meta's Threads is being seen as a formidable rival to Twitter. The app has passed 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours of launch, Zuckerberg shared on his verified Threads account.

Threads users can post up to 500 characters and share links, photos and videos for up to 5 minutes.

"Threads has the potential to be a formidable rival to Twitter, setting itself apart from previous challengers that struggled to attract users. Threads started strong with a ready user base ported from Instagram. With even a fraction of the Instagram monthly active user base of over 2 billion, Threads has the potential to rival Twitter in terms of audience size," Ram said.

"Considering that many Gen Z users are Instagrammers first or Instagrammers only, we will see them adopting Threads and leveraging its Twitter-like functionalities," Advertising agency TBWAndia executive director Ranjeev Vij said.

However, some users also complained of slow posting and missing the option of saving or sharing the post on Threads.

Users also pointed out that one may need to delete the Instagram account in order to go off the Threads platform. The platform gives an option of deactivating or taking a break in the 'Accounts' section.

When contacted, a Meta spokesperson said, "At this time, you can't delete your Threads profile without deleting your Instagram account. This is something we're working on. In the meanwhile, you can deactivate your Threads profile at any time.