Twitter launches TweetDeck 2.0 to almost universal disdain
Long-term fans of TweetDeck, the favoured platform for “power” Twitter users, woke up this morning to discover a relaunched TweetDeck 2.0 with diminished features. And the news that in 30 days, all “users must be Verified to access TweetDeck”. That means paying up to $11 per month in the US, £11 in the UK and $19 in Australia (full pricing here)
One of the key reasons that businesses use TweetDeck is for its Teams functionality, but this is “temporarily unavailable”. Teams allowed multiple employees to share a Twitter account without the need to share a password, adding a valuable security layer and making it much easier for admins to manage.
Twitter says it is “still redesigning a new TweetDeck Teams experience”.
The other big loss — and this one appears to be a design decision — is that power users can no longer view all their accounts on one deck. If you have a personal account and a business account, you must switch between views by clicking on your Profile icon.
By losing the ability to view all your messages on one screen, Twitter has lost one of TweetDeck’s most valuable features.
What Twitter is trying to do with TweetDeck 2.0
There are some improvements with the relaunched TweetDeck. For example, if you wished to embed a poll previously then you needed to head to twitter.com rather than use the service.
In the Tweet announcing the changes, @TwitterSupport said: “TweetDeck now supports full composer functionality, Spaces, video docking, polls, and more”. Following its link points you to a page with more detail about “TweetDeck 2.0”.
The key new feature is about the Tweet composer. This “lets you create threads and add photos, videos, GIFs, polls, or emojis to your Tweets, including scheduled Tweets”.
Then there’s Video Docking. This means you can “watch a video while performing other functions like accessing content in the same column, and changing Decks”.
Twitter also promises cleaner workspaces and “advanced search”.
But what Twitter is really trying to do with TweetDeck 2.0, it seems, is convert free users of Twitter into paid-for users. Bearing in mind that so many power users (the people Twitter relies upon to create its community) use TweetDeck, that seems like a big gamble.
More on Twitter
Tim Danton
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