• After signalling its intention to charge users to access TweetDeck (now XPro), X has begun pushing users to sign up for Twitter Blue (now XBlue).
• Those who try to log into TweetDeck are now redirected to their personal accounts and prompted to purchase an XBlue subscription.
• In South Africa, the current cost of a single XBlue account is R1 739.88 per year.

The day has some, as X (formerly Twitter) has begun pushing XPro (formerly TweetDeck) users to sign up for an XBlue (formerly Twitter Blue) account should they wish to access the features of the social media management tool.

This is a process that has been in the works for a few weeks now, as in early July Twitter as it was still known at the time, signalled its intent to fold TweetDeck into Twitter Blue as a paid-for feature, giving users 30 days to prepare and make the necessary arrangements.

While we are a little over the forecasted 30 days, the change is now happening.

If you have not signed up for XBlue or tried in any way to get verified on the platform, after logging in you will be redirected to your personal X account, with a notification window popping up and instructing you to sign up for XBlue.

In South Africa, pricing for access is also seen, with a year’s worth of XBlue costing R1 739.88 for 12 months. At the time of writing, a “discount” for the once freely accessible tool is on offer, with it costing R1 519.00 for a year, representing a 12 percent lower cost.

For those who are not keen on paying for TweetDeck just yet, which includes ourselves, you can still access the Legacy version of the platform.

To that end, on the XPro log in page, there is a button below the sign in form to redirect you to Legacy XPro. If you click on that you get sent to the old TweetDeck log in page, and once you’ve plugged in your username and password, the old version is loaded.

It remains to be seen how long this will remain available to users, but the pay-to-play model that Elon Musk has implemented since taking the helm of the social media platform appears to have claimed its latest victim.

Either way, it leaves social media managers, or those who handle multiple X accounts in the lurch, especially if they are unwilling to pay for a tool which was once free.

[Image – Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash]