New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….
Original story (published on November 18, 2022) follows:
The recent acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk has been nothing short of a mess and extremely chaotic. Many are leaving the platform for good, while others are enjoying the drama with popcorn in their hand.
While some may say that the platform no longer promotes healthy communication, insightful debates, or useful information, it’s still one of the most popular social media platforms in the world and crushing past records.
So far, we have seen Musk’s plans including the Twitter Blue subscription and the new advertisement policy. But none of these changes were really well received by its users.
Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0 chaos
The dust had hardly settled on these issues, Musk decided to make everything even more chaotic with the ‘Twitter 2.0’ bomb.
Apparently, the new owner of Twitter recently shared ‘hardcore’ plans for Twitter 2.0 with his staff members via email.
This has inevitably prompted a considerable number of employees to resign en masse following the ultimatum. Not just that, more and more employees are now coming out listing other issues.
For instance, the decision to temporarily close offices and the fact that only a thousand employees signed up for the Twitter 2.0 approach are only making it worse for the platform.
With the entire payroll department also resigning and incoming reports about Twitter looking to hire software engineers for their future plans is furthering the idea of a looming disaster.
But Twitter is surprisingly doing better
Many have already bid farewell to the platform for good thus pushing the #RIPTwitter and #Twitter 2.0 to trend on a daily basis. It’s interesting to note that Elon Musk seems to not be phased by these complaints.
In fact, he can often be seen bragging about the increase in the number of Twitter users ever since his takeover.
Not just the new Twitter owner, many people have taken all this mockery to another level and are enjoying the drama and creating memes about the entire situation.
You can check out one of those memes below for reference:
Nonetheless, it is quite evident that many people including Twitter employees are not here for the new cultural reset of the platform.
There are still numerous uncertainties and confusion unfolding every day that has forced many to distance themselves from the site.
It’s still unclear where the future of Twitter is ultimately headed but a lot of people have already strayed from their trust in the company.
That said, we’ll keep an eye on further developments and reflect the same here so stay tuned for more.
Update 1 (November 22, 2022)
12:23 pm (IST): After laying off thousands of employees, it’s been reported that Elon Musk is ready to hire again for the roles of engineering and sales.
Update 2 (November 25, 2022)
10:35 am (IST): Elon Musk has confirmed via a poll that they are planning to unban those accounts that were banned citing other issues apart from breaking laws or engaged in egregious spam.
05:00 pm (IST): After the mass layoff at Twitter, Elon Musk is now focusing on Twitter 2.0 and all the new changes he can bring to the platform. For that, Twitter is aggressively recruiting new employee who can contribute to Twitter 2.0.
Also, it came to notice that many employees are rejecting Elon Musk’s vision of hardcore Twitter 2.0 and leaving the company. More on that here.
And not just the employees, some WWE superstars are also not happy with the Twitter 2.0 at the moment.
05:50 pm (IST): In a recent meeting in San Francisco, Elon Musk told employees that he plans to encrypt DMs and add encrypted video and voice calling between accounts. More on that here.
Update 3 (November 28, 2022)
10:54 am (IST): Responding to a tweet, Elon Musk said that the team is working on a number of features. For instance, it will let users opt-in to civil discourse mode, help reduce abuse by way of validating only the Twitter Blue accounts, and more.
Musk also shared some slides that propagate upcoming agendas for Twitter such as Encrypted DMs, the ability to post long-form tweets, and much more.
07:22 pm (IST): Elon Musk has confirmed that they might expand the character limit on Twitter in the coming days.
Dodgecoin price has surged after Elon Musk hinted that he might accept the cryptocurrency for payments in Twitter 2.0.
Furthermore, Elon Musk has shared some slides from their recent meeting which suggest that Twitter is now ready to recruit new employees. Moreover, he calls Twitter 2.0 an ‘Everything app’.
Update 4 (December 01, 2022)
09:22 am (IST): Elon Musk recently tweeted to apprise users of the probable drop in their follower count as Twitter is currently getting rid of a lot of spam/scam accounts at the moment.
Coincidentally, this comes after Twitter 2.0 mission to promote transparency and protect the public conversation on the microblogging platform.
Update 5 (December 05, 2022)
05:57 pm (IST): As noticed by one of our team members, Twitter appears to be testing ‘nested reply’ system to make it easier to read tweets.
As can be seen in the image linked below, replies have been shifted slightly to the right similar to Facebook and Instagram. However, there’s no official word on the same.
06:15 pm (IST): It has come to light that Elon Musk has added a ‘live tweeting’ feature to Twitter 2.0. However, there are not many details about this feature.
In addition to it, Elon Musk also claimed that the social media platform ‘Twitter 2.0’ is serving 90 billion tweet impressions per day.
Update 6 (December 06, 2022)
04:48 pm (IST): It appears that Twitter has added the option to upload high-quality videos even without a Twitter Blue subscription.
Update 7 (December 09, 2022)
12:04 pm (IST): Elon Musk has announced on Twitter that they are working on a software update that will show the user’s true account status.
That is, they’ll know if they’ve been shadowbanned along with the reason and how to appeal for it.
Update 8 (December 12, 2022)
10:02 am (IST): Twitter Blue, a monthly opt-in subscription feature that adds a blue checkmark to your account, is set to relaunch today priced at $11/month on iOS and $8/month on the web.
However, there’s still no word for the availability of the same on Android.
With the help of the new Twitter Blue feature, subscribers will be able to Edit Tweets, upload 1080p videos, and get a reader mode.
Twitter Blue subscribers can also change their handle, display name, or profile photo but their verification checkmarks will temporarily be taken away.
Additionally, Twitter will begin to replace the ‘Official’ label with a gold checkmark for business and consequentially with a gray checkmark for government and joint accounts.
11:30 am (IST): Elon Musk has reportedly (1, 2) made some changes to the platform that prevents tweets from bots to appear at the top of the thread.
He has also confirmed that the character limit of tweets will be increased from 280 to 4000. Furthermore, he agreed on diversifying the ‘Trending tab’.
Update 9 (December 13, 2022)
11:00 am (IST): Elon Musk recently took to Twitter to announce that the team is trying its best to shut down bots. Moreover, there will be a provision to prosecute scammers in any case.
Coincidentally, it comes after the long-standing issues related to scammers (1,2,3,4,5) and their aggressive promotion of Crypto and NFTs (1,2,3,4,5).
In fact, Elon Musk’s identity was also abused in one of the cryptocurrency scams. Interestingly, a scammer created the account and started adding people to a list called ‘Deal of the Year’ for a fake cryptocurrency giveaway.
11:48 am (IST): Elon Musk has confirmed that the basic Blue subscription will not completely remove the ads, but limit them to half and they’ll launch a high-tier plan next year with no ads.
Furthermore, with Twitter Blue for Business, a gold verification badge will be provided to all the verified businesses.
11:58 am (IST): Twitter support announced that the official profile labels will be replaced with grey and gold checkmarks. However, some types of accounts will still have the old labels. Get more information on Profile labels here.
In order to get Twitter Blue, users should have an account which is 90 days old and a confirmed phone number. Moreover, if you already have a Blue subscription, you don’t need to re-purchase it to get the new features.
12:00 pm (IST): Twitter will reportedly remove all the legacy blue checkmarks in a few months.
12:06 pm (IST): Users are now looking for yellow checkmark on Twitter. However, yellow is officially the gold checkmark. Twitter has introduced three different types on checkmarks which does not include yellow checkmark.
– Grey checkmark for accounts affiliated with government or those monitored by Twitter.
– Gold checkmark for advertisers or company owned accounts.
Update 10 (December 19, 2022)
01:06 pm (IST): Elon Musk has announced that they will incorporate mute and block signals from Blue Verified as downvotes.
Moreover, he said that the major policy changes will be decided through votes.
04:00 pm (IST): Twitter might soon provide users with a proper reason for account suspension or deboosting. More on that here.
Update 11 (December 20, 2022)
10:26 am (IST): Twitter has announced Twitter Blue for Business, a program for businesses that will help distinguish brands and their key employees on Twitter.
This feature, however, will be initially available for limited businesses. But it will be expanded next year.
Moreover, Elon Musk could only allow Blue subscribers to take part in policy related polls.
Update 12 (December 21, 2022)
12:17 pm (IST): It seems that Elon Musk is all set to resign as CEO of Twitter after 57.5% of those polled voted in favor of him stepping down as the owner of the platform.
Update 13 (December 22, 2022)
01:30 pm (IST): Twitter has announced a new feature called $Cashtags. That is when you tweet the symbol of a major stock, ETF, or crypto currency with ‘$’ at the beginning, you’ll see a clickable link that will open search results page.
Update 14 (December 23, 2022)
02:11 pm (IST): Elon Musk has announced that they have released a new ‘View count’ feature that reveals how many times a tweet has been seen.
Also, Twitter Blue subscribers will now be able to upload 60-minute-long videos of up to 2GB in size from the web at 1080p resolution.
02:20 pm (IST): Twitter users are furious after Elon Musk introduced new labeling system where blue, gray, and gold checkmarks denote different types of verified accounts.
06:44 pm (IST): After Elon Musk posted a poll asking users if he should step down as the CEO of Twitter, Mr Beast has asked if he could fill his spot.
And surprisingly, Musk said that it’s not out of the question, meaning it’s possible.
Update 15 (December 26, 2022)
11:44 am (IST): Elon Musk has confirmed that Twitter will get several major UI improvements in January.
Update 16 (December 30, 2022)
12:43 pm (IST): Elon Musk recently announced that the goal of new Twitter will seek to optimize unregrettable user minutes.
Update 17 (January 02, 2023)
11:57 am (IST): Elon Musk has confirmed to bring new Twitter navigation that will allow users to swipe and switch between tabs such as recommended and followed tweets, trends, topics and more.
Update 18 (January 04, 2023)
12:40 pm (IST): The Twitter team has announced some changes regarding the ads policy of the platform: Source (click/tap to expand)
Update 19 (January 05, 2023)
12:40 pm (IST): It looks like the Twitter for iPhone/Android label is back as some users have been reportedly seeing it (1,2,3).
01:28 pm (IST): Twitter data of over 200 million users has been leaked publicly. And disturbingly, it is available for anyone to download. More on that here.
Update 20 (January 09, 2023)
05:30 pm (IST): Twitter app will get new features this week. First, users will be able to swype to change between ‘followed tweets’ and ‘recommended tweets’.
A few weeks later, the ‘Bookmark button’ will be implemented in the Tweet details. Also, in February the ‘Long format Tweets’ will arrive along with formatting features like bold, underline and font size.
Meanwhile, a executive revealed that the company will reduce the number of employees in areas that do not require as much volume, opting for measures such as ‘consolidate teams under one leader (instead of two)’.
Update 21 (January 11, 2023)
04:50 pm (IST): Twitter has made a new change in the home page of its iOS app where it now shows ‘For You’ tab as default. More on that here.
Update 22 (January 12, 2023)
01:24 pm (IST): Twitter has announced that the reach of hateful speech on the platform is continuously decreasing and the impressions on such English-language tweets now account for less than 0.01%.
Also, they have extended the lookback period of these insights from 60 to 120 days based on users feedback.
03:07 pm (IST): Elon Musk is reportedly thinking about selling usernames through online auctions. This is being done to increase the company’s revenue.
Update 23 (January 16, 2023)
12:27 pm (IST): Twitter has announced that they’ll soon launch Verification for Organizations that will offer business accounts and affiliation bages to businesses that subscribe. More on that here.
Furthermore, Elon Musk has confirmed that they will publish tweet recommendation code, and make account or tweet status visible by next month.
Update 24 (January 20, 2023)
03:48 pm (IST): Twitter has made a new change where Community Notes will now also show on quote tweets. It is currently live on the web app and coming soon on Android and iOS.
Update 25 (January 23, 2023)
05:39 pm (IST): Twitter has announced that they have released an algorithm update for Community Notes to keep note status and contributor impact score more stable as they expand the feature.
Update 26 (January 25, 2023)
05:37 pm (IST): Twitter has announced that now web users can return to a timeline as per their choice by closing the ‘For You’ or ‘Following’ tabs. The feature will soon be available to iOS and Android users as well.
Update 27 (January 26, 2023)
03:54 pm (IST): Twitter is now reportedly testing ‘Verfied views’, a feature that will show saperate view counts from verified users.
Update 28 (January 31, 2023)
04:13 pm (IST): Twitter is reportedly working to bring payments feature on the platform and the company has begun applying for regulatory licenses. More on that here.
Update 29 (February 1, 2023)
02:14 pm (IST): Twitter has reportedly removed CoTweet feature after its initial testing period. This feature allowed two accounts to tweet together and it was available in the US, Canada and South Korea.
17:45 pm (IST): Elon Musk has announced that the platform will start paying creators for creation of interesting ad threads or sharing ads. Source
Update 30 (February 2, 2023)
02:45 pm (IST): Elon Musk has been exploring ways to monetize Twitter since his takeover. This has led to the release of a paid version of the Twitter APIs, as free access will expire on February 9th.
05:45 pm (IST): Twitter may soon request your ID in order to authenticate your identity.
Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Twitter section, so be sure to follow them as well.
Featured image source: Twitter
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