Twitter’s ‘new’ Tweetdeck lives behind a verified paywall

Twitter is officially launching its “new” version of TweetDeck to everyone, according to a tweet from Twitter’s support account, which is a step that it had to take to help mitigate some of the issues TweetDeck has been experiencing lately. The switch comes with a potentially-heartbreaking catch: TweetDeck is going to become a Verified-only feature in 30 days, the account says, meaning you’ll need to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to be able to use it.

All users will be forced to switch over to the new version, according to two Twitter employees, and those staffers have also shared some slight clarifications about what’s been going on with old TweetDeck. For many on the old interface, TweetDeck has been useless recently; when I wrote this story, all of my columns were just spinning with a “Loading…” message, and my colleagues saw something similar as well.

While the empty columns popped up after Twitter began rate-limiting tweets, according to the Twitter employees, those rate limits aren’t actually causing the problems with old TweetDeck. Instead, the employees claim that the issues are because of Twitter removing legacy APIs to prevent data scraping.

The work to force the switch will begin “this week,” that employee said, and in replies, people are imploring that Twitter “please don’t.” 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’m 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. (And as I write this, it still hasn’t, despite Monday’s news.)

When reached for comment, Twitter’s press email auto-replied with a poop emoji, as it as been doing since March.

Update July 3rd, 6:32PM ET: Twitter is officially launching the new TweetDeck and making it a Twitter Blue-only feature.