Well that didn’t take long

I said the other day I’d probably finally stop using Twitter if anything happened to Tweetdeck, and, well, it’s like Elon heard me:

Twitter users will soon need to be verified in order to use the online dashboard TweetDeck, the company announced on Monday.
The popular and previously free tool allows users to organize the accounts they follow into different columns to easily monitor content. It has been popular with businesses and news organizations.
The new policy will take effect in 30 days, the company said in a tweet, and could bring a revenue boost to Twitter, which has struggled to retain advertisers under Elon Musk’s ownership. […]
The TweetDeck change could be an attempt to push more users to the Twitter Blue program, through which users can pay for verification. The subscription service costs $11 per month in the US (on iOS or Android), £11 in the UK and $19 in Australia, and includes the blue checkmark, a demarcation previously free to politicians, journalists and other notable public figures.
The service attracted just 150,000 subscribers in its first weeks – a small portion of the platform’s global user base of nearly 400 million. As of 30 April, the number of paid subscribers had fallen to about 68,000, according to reports from Mashable.

I was a little perplexed, if not indeed a little concerned, when Tweetdeck suddenly launched a new design at me last night. I no longer remember when I started using it, but it was certainly at least back in the days when it still supported Facebook, and it stopped doing that in May 2013. And in 10 (plus?) years I don’t believe it’s ever changed its design until now. I am not a fan of the new look, which now makes it look and behave more like the web version of Twitter which I am not a fan of either. I was puzzled by what this new design indicated… and I’m guessing this is it.

And if I’m going to have to pay to use a version of Tweetdeck that just looks like the web version of the site within the next few weeks then, well, I’m not. If the site lasts long enough I’ve no doubt the web version will also require payment to use it (on top of how you currently already need an account to see anything). So once Tweetdeck starts demanding cash, I’m gone.

For what it may be worth, while on Mastodon yesterday, someone posted this interesting theory…

…but, as nice as it looks, I don’t buy it. The whole idea outlined here is simply too complicated for me to believe it, and the fact that we now know Jack Dorsey is no longer as keen on that “singular solution” as he was last October doesn’t help. Also, it kind of relies in some degree on Oolong actually knowing what he’s doing… which is debatable at best.

Also, I joined the queue for Bluesky the other day. We’ll see how that goes. If it does.