Users must be verified to access ‘new’ version of TweetDeck - Twitter

Twitter is officially opening its "new" version of TweetDeck to everyone, according to a tweet from Twitter's support account, but here's the possibly sad catch: TweetDeck will become a Verified-only feature in 30 days, according to the account, which means you'll need to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to utilise it.

TweetDeck's new version has been in beta testing for over two years.

Charging for TweetDeck, which was previously free and is extensively used by businesses and news organisations to conveniently monitor content, could help Twitter, which has battled to keep advertising revenue under billionaire Elon Musk's ownership.

The change comes only days after Musk stated that both confirmed and unverified users would be limited to seeing a certain number of posts each day "to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation." Musk set a daily limit of 1,000 tweets for non-verified users and 10,000 for verified ones.

His statement provoked a furious outcry from Twitter users, and ad experts predicted it would damage new CEO Linda Yaccarino, who took over last month. To verify their account, individuals must pay $8 (R150) each month, while organisations must spend $1,000 (R18,774) per month.

Twitter has been testing a new version of TweetDeck for several years, and it is finally being rolled out internationally under the new management. A TweetDeck Twitter community member stated that the firm deleted legacy APIs to prevent scraping, which impacted the web app.

"I can’t blame them, I remember not liking the TweetDeck Preview when I tried it out in 2021, so I don’t know how much the preview may have 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", he tweeted.