Twitter Launches New TweetDeck 2.0, But You'll Need To Pay To Use It

TweetDeck has been the source of ample drama today as users woke up to a completely unusable web app. No one knew what was going on, but speculation quickly spread that the recent rate limitations Twitter imposed on users were the cause of the problems. That turned out to be the case ... sort of. A series of tweets from a Twitter employee named Ben clarified things: legacy TweetDeck was down because Twitter had pulled the legacy APIs it relied on. Why? In an effort to reduce data scrapping, which was also the reason for the rate limits. 

Ben said in his tweet thread that Twitter was working on migrating users to the TweetDeck preview, but it wasn't clear how long it would take for more accounts to get access to the new version — he'd said in one tweet that he was still waiting for permission to add beta testers. Only hours later, though, the ultimate reason for the chaos was revealed: Twitter has locked the new TweetDeck behind the verified paywall, meaning you'll need to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to access it.

The good news is that the new TweetDeck — previously available as a preview — is now available to everyone who wants to use it. The downside is that its formal launch comes with a paywall. There's a 30-day reprieve from paying, according to the announcement tweet from Twitter Support, so that'll at least give users time to decide whether they want to shell out the money, live without TweetDeck, or abandon Twitter entirely.

We have just launched a new, improved version of TweetDeck. All users can continue to access their saved searches & workflows via https://t.co/2WwL3hNVR2 by selecting "Try the new TweetDeck" in the bottom left menu.

Some notes on getting started and the future of the product...

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 3, 2023

If you're a TweetDeck user, you'll need to click the "Try the new TweetDeck" flag in the web app. Twitter says the updated version of the platform includes "full composer functionality," but the Teams aspect is out of commission and won't be available for "weeks." In its related FAQ document, Twitter refers to this as TweetDeck 2.0, stating that users only have a one-time chance to migrate their existing data over to the new TweetDeck experience.

The company says that additional features will be added to the new TweetDeck in time, though there's no indication of what those features may be and how long the soon-to-be-paying users will need to wait. As expected, the paywall announcement hasn't gone over well with many people, some of whom have expressed concerns that Twitter may not have the personnel needed to handle customer support issues that may arise.