Happy 4th of July if you’re in the United States, and for the rest of you, well happy 4th of July! As you may have heard, Twitter is undergoing quite a transformation, and yesterday announced that use of Tweetdeck will be limited starting at the end of the month to “verified” (meaning paying) users.
We started our @OnMSFT (well winbeta.org at the time) Twitter account in 2010 and have been active users since that time, both to promote our posts and our site, and to monitor Twitter for story ideas. We’ve used Tweetdeck as a tool to monitor multiple topics and users at once, and while it does have some shortcomings, it’s been a valuable tool.
Of course, we have a number of personal feelings about the direction Twitter is heading under Elon Musk, and our desire to support that direction. We’ve also noticed quite a drop in the traffic we receive via Twitter, especially since Musk took over. At the same time, Tweetdeck has been and continues to be a valuable resource for us. We pay for a number of “pro” versions of the plugins we use, because they add value, and it’s no different for Tweetdeck.
So while we had no intentions of paying for a “blue check,” we will probably bite the bullet and become verified for our @onmsft account. We wish there wasn’t so much baggage around the way Musk has been handling Twitter, but it does provide a unique and valuable service for us, and until that changes, we’ll be (somewhat reluctantly) sticking around.
If you’re not a fan of Twitter, we’ve tried to make ourselves available across a range of social media, including Facebook (and yes we’ll at least be looking into Threads) and Mastodon. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed.
Do you use Twitter to follow us? Facebook? Mastodon? Let us know in the comments below.
