Elon Musk Might Remove This Brand New Twitter Feature
Much of the recent drama around Tesla CEO Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter has focused on what changes the billionaire might make to the social media giant's corporate structure and long-established rules for content moderation. After all, Musk wasted no time clearing out the Twitter management team, not to mention discussing his planned changes to moderation.
What might actually be the first customer-facing change to Musk's new Twitter could be one of the platform's most recent, least remarked-upon changes, however. In fact, the very first thing in Musk's crosshairs might be a fairly easy target, especially compared with changing Twitter's entrenched corporate culture and getting buy-in from its millions of famously fractious users.
Elon Musk, never shy with his opinions, seems not to care for NFTs on Twitter:
This is annoying pic.twitter.com/KAkDl29CTX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2022
That might come as a surprise to anyone up on the October 27 debut of NFT Tweet Tiles, a Twitter feature meant to establish a marketplace for the product Musk scolded in his tweet. Non-fungible tokens have been controversial for plenty of reasons, from their environmental impact, to their aesthetics, to the core business model itself, after all.
How fungible is too fungible?
One of the first innovations delivered to Twitter users as of Elon Musk's acquisition was the NFT Tweet Tiles feature. The developers envision a complete marketplace for creators and customers to buy, sell and trade NFTs directly through Twitter, no third party required (via Ethereum World News). The feature debuted for Twitter users on October 27, displaying creator information and purchase links alongside images of NFTs when viewed through Twitter.
Now testing: NFT Tweet Tiles 🚀
Some links to NFTs on @rarible, @MagicEden, @dapperlabs and @Jumptradenft will now show you a larger picture of the NFT alongside details like the title and creator. One more step in our journey to let developers impact the Tweet experience. pic.twitter.com/AkBisciB1i
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) October 27, 2022
No product's features please everyone, of course. Still, it must have been an anxious moment for developers when they discovered their new CEO had taken to their own platform just a few months previous to castigate their work. It might be safe to assume Musk changed his mind on realizing the prospects of a Twitter-based NFT marketplace, but as yet the brand new CEO is staying tight-lipped on the subject. Given he's already spoken out to placate potential advertisers as to the upcoming changes that are in store, though, it seems an answer for just how Twitter will prove its $44 billion sale price will need to come sooner rather than later.