That’s a wrap on one of the most useful social media tools ever. On Tuesday TweetDeck, the app that became a staple of journalists, activists and power users of all stripes by offering customizable ways to view multiple Twitter feeds, was formally renamed “X Pro,” and, as Elon Musk euphemistically announced on July 3, also locked behind a paywall.
When users attempt to access TweetDeck, they’re now informed they must purchase a subscription to Blue, the paid version of Twitter that the company continues to insist, inaccurately, is a form of account verification. For those who wish to tell the world they they’re in the same company as favored accounts like Catturd and Christopher Rufo, that”ll cost you $84 a year.
Twitter of course was officially rebranded as X on July 24, though the majority of users continue to refer to it by the world famous brand name it had for the previous 17 years.
TweetDeck was first launched in 2008 by Iain Dodsworth. It was acquired by Twitter in 2011 and integrated into the platform’s interface. After the change to “X Pro” was implemented, some users said it was demonstrably worse than the original version. And a great many users simply declared they’d be using Twitter less rather than paying.
Users bid a fond farewell to TweetDeck such as writer Lacy Baugher Milas who said, “RIP Tweetdeck, and the sanity of social media pros and power users everywhere. She went on to add, “But then again ‘new’ Tweetdeck is one of the absolute worst products I’ve ever seen so it probably deserves the Old Yeller treatment anyway.”
Polygon Deputy Managing Editor Samit Sarker tweeted, “Welp, so they finally got around to putting up the paywall for TweetDeck — I just tried to load it and was redirected to a sign-up page for Twitter Blue guess I’ll just be looking at way fewer tweets!”
Another user wrote, “lol rip tweetdeck for all of us who relied on it FOR WORK.”
“You’ll probably stop seeing me around. (I already deleted the mobile app.) I’m gonna miss this place… I’m gonna miss this place… or rather, the people who are/were here, and what it used to be,” wrote Karel P Kerezman.
