If you are social media manager or journalist you likely have the professional-focused version of Twitter, TweetDeck, running on your web browser. While updates to the UI of TweetDeck are a little hit or miss, in general it is the best free option to monitor and manage multiple accounts.
That free status could change, however, if some discoveries by security researcher Jane Manchun Wong are to be believed.
Wong’s recent track record when it comes to Twitter-related discoveries are fairly accurate, so there is some credence to the claims that TweetDeck could become a paid-for feature folded into the social media platform’s subscription service Twitter Blue.
This is not the first time that suggestions of making TweetDeck paid-for have surfaced online, with Bloomberg reporting on the matter last year as the company was actively considering a subscription-based version of the dashboard tool.
Added to this is the fact that Wong unearthed code earlier this month which redirected non-Blue subscribed users trying to access TweetDeck to a Blue sign-up page.
Twitter is filling in the new @TweetDeck signup page that they’re working on. Two new highlights:
1. A link for “the legacy version of TweetDeck” (even though it might be deprecated at some point in the future)
2. “Ad-free experience” being marketed as the selling point :P https://t.co/XP6sYsTUGM pic.twitter.com/fRc0ujZ7o2
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 30, 2022
While it remains to be seen what the end goal is here and indeed if Twitter intends to fold TweetDeck into its Blue service, if the company does choose to go that route, it will likely rub a lot of people the wrong way, especially as this dedicated dashboard tool has been freely accessible since inception.
That said, it could prove a significant addition if Twitter is aiming to get more people to sign up its its divisive Blue service, which currently costs $2.99 per month for a handful of exclusive features.
Either way, Twitter will need to handle whatever it chooses to do with TweetDeck with care.
