Twitter, the gift that keeps on giving

With the holidays right around the corner, this is the time to think about which direction your brand or company is heading. That is also the case at Twitter, although they seem to be thinking about New Year’s resolutions for longer. Twitter updates are flying around so quickly that it is hard to keep track. But no worries, here are the most important changes of the last couple of weeks.

1. Could it be longer?

Old tweets with 140 characters are a thing of the past for a longer period, as you can post tweets with double the number of characters. Last week Twitter announced that this number is going to be another 14 times higher, up to 4000 characters. More than you can fit in an Instagram caption, for instance. What stays the same is that you can only see the first 280 characters and have to press ‘see more’ when you want to read more. Still, it is a shame that the short updates, the main characteristic of Twitter, are lost with this update.

2. Ban on other channels

Twitter announced this week that it is going to be forbidden to post tweets with links to accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and more. Your linktree and lnk.bio links are not safe either. This rule would have consequences for millions of accounts. No wonder that it rained complaints and Twitter decided to silently delete this update and instead posted this poll:

3. Gold and square

Then we also have the blue ticks debacle. This week Twitter reported that verified accounts’ profile pictures are going to be square instead of round. Together with the gold checkmark, this should give users the ability to distinguish official brand accounts from possible fake accounts with a bought blue checkmark.

4. Twitter Blue for Business

The platform introduced Twitter Blue for Business this week for the first time. It’s a program that lets businesses distinguish their brands and key employees on Twitter. Whenever a company is part of this program, employees could put the brand’s logo next to their name as an icon to have a brand-verified account. The beginning of this update was rolled out two days later.

5. Goodbye, Elon?

Last but not least, we go out with a bang. Last Monday, Twitter head Elon Musk posted a poll on the platform to vote if he needs to remain at the helm. Twitter users had 12 hours to make a vote in this binding referendum. More than 17 million people voted which led to a majority that would like to see Musk leave. Elon Musk, a man of his word, reacted that he would indeed step down as soon as he found a replacement. Who knows if this change will lead to some rest at Twitter HQ. That would be a great Christmas present for online marketers.