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In April 2022, it was revealed that Elon Musk was Twitter’s largest shareholder with a 9% stake in the company - and just days later, the outspoken entrepreneur made an offer to purchase the social media platform for $43 billion ($54.20 per share), and take the company private. After a substantial amount of back and forth regarding the buyout and concerns over the number of spam accounts on the platform, Musk finally agreed to go ahead with the acquisition in October 2022, marking the beginning of a new era for Twitter. Since his takeover, we’ve already seen a vast number of changes to the way the platform works, which have impacted both businesses and individual users. If your brand is unsure about any of Twitter’s recent updates, read on to discover which ones may apply to you.
Verification Changes
The biggest Twitter change that has been dominating headlines is the new verification process for businesses, brands and other organisations. At the moment (Thursday 26th January 2023), businesses are being invited to sign up for the platform’s Verification for Organisations service, so if you want to preserve your brand’s existing verification - or apply for one if you’ve never had one before - you’ll need to fill out the form and wait for confirmation. If you get accepted, you’ll receive the new gold checkmark and square profile picture for your brand. You’ll then be able to link any affiliated individuals, businesses and brands to your account, who will each get a small badge of your company logo beside their name. It hasn’t yet been revealed how much this process will cost, but it’s likely to be more than the regular $8 subscription fee for Twitter Blue.
Twitter Blue
Twitter Blue is a subscription service which costs $8 per month on the web and $11 per month for those who sign up on iOS. It adds a blue checkmark beside the user’s name and gives them access to subscriber-only features such as:
In order to prevent people from impersonating brands and other public figures once they’ve got their blue checkmark, subscribers who change their profile information, including display name, profile photo, and username (@handle), will temporarily lose the checkmark until those changes are reviewed by Twitter.
Revue Shutdown
In January 2021, Twitter acquired newsletter platform Revue, a tool which helped writers monetise their Twitter presence by integrating their editorial newsletters directly into the timeline. However, in December, it was announced that Revue was going to be shut down, a change which took effect just a few days ago on 18th January. Users can no longer log in to their accounts and are unable to access previous content, so if your business used Revue in the past, this is something to be aware of.
Longer Tweets
Potentially tying in with the closure of Revue - and to end what Elon Musk calls “the absurdity of notepad screenshots” - Twitter is planning to increase the character limit for tweets from 280 to a whopping 4,000, as confirmed by app researcher and developer Alessandro Paluzzi.
#Twitter is working on long-form tweets 👀
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) December 9, 2022
ℹ️ The first 280 of 4000 characters will be visible by default https://t.co/qQL34SIY0i pic.twitter.com/Tozuzl82PJ
Musk explained that these longer tweets “will get the same Timeline screen space as other tweets, but you will be able to click for more” - so fortunately this update doesn’t mean the timeline will suddenly be full of huge essays that take a long time to scroll past!
Yes, these will get the same Timeline screen space as other tweets, but you will be able to click for more
— Mr. Tweet (@elonmusk) January 9, 2023
Musk also announced that a range of “simple formatting features like bold, underline and font size” will become available, stating that “the goal is to allow people to publish long-form natively on Twitter, rather than forcing them to use another website”. However, keeping things brief and to-the-point will still be recommended on the platform.
We will also be adding simple formatting features like bold, underline & font size later this quarter.
— Mr. Tweet (@elonmusk) January 9, 2023
The goal is to allow people to publish long-form natively on Twitter, rather than forcing them to use another website.
Twitter will continue to recommend brevity in tweets.
Grey Checkmark
You may also see a new grey checkmark appearing beside some user’s names. This symbol indicates that an account represents a government institution or official, or a multilateral organisation. Eligible institutions include national and local crisis response, public safety, law enforcement, embassies and other major national level agencies. Eligible elected or appointed officials include heads of state, official spokespeople, top diplomatic leaders and cabinet members.
Community Notes
The tool formerly known as Birdwatch recently underwent a rebrand to become Community Notes, which is “a collaborative way to add helpful context to Tweets and keep people better informed”. Essentially, it’s a crowd-sourced fact-checking system that enables users to add notes to Tweets that might be misleading or contain false information.
Community Notes is a gamechanger for improving accuracy on Twitter!
— Mr. Tweet (@elonmusk) November 10, 2022
Twitter users must sign up to become a Community Notes contributor and must have:
• No recent notice of Twitter Rules violations (in order to to reduce the likelihood of abusive contributions)
• Joined Twitter at least 6 months ago
• A verified phone number
Once accepted, users can write and rate notes.
The latest expansion of this feature means that users in more regions around the world can now apply to become contributors, which could come in handy seeing as content moderators were among those involved in Elon Musk’s mass job cuts when he first took over the platform as a cost-saving measure.
We admit new contributors in batches, growing the contributor base by ~10% per week. We’re monitoring quality and continuing to expand to new countries over time 🌎🌍🌏
— Community Notes (@CommunityNotes) January 20, 2023
New Tweet View Count Display
In December 2022, Twitter rolled out a new view counter display on all tweets, allowing users to easily view the reach and exposure of their content. Musk wants users to know that their tweets are actually being seen by a lot more people than they think, and hopes that if Twitter can start highlighting this, it will make people more likely to tweet more often - therefore boosting activity on the platform.
Twitter will start showing view count for all tweets, just as view count is shown for all videos. The system is far more alive than it would seem.
— Mr. Tweet (@elonmusk) December 1, 2022
However, many users voiced their dissatisfaction with the layout of the new counter, so just a few days ago on 17th January, it was announced that the view count would now appear on the right side of each tweet, in between the like and share icons.
Many of you didn’t like seeing view counts on the left. We heard you. View counts will now show on the right side of your Tweet, located between the Like and Share icons. Live on web, iOS and Android coming soon!
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 17, 2023
Of course, your brand may have already been monitoring its impressions using Twitter’s dedicated Analytics Dashboard or a third-party reporting tool, so this update may or may not be useful to you, but it certainly offers an easy way to have a quick glance at your view numbers and see how well your content is performing.
Search Keyword Ads
Twitter has launched a new ad option called Search Keyword Ads which will enable advertisers to place Promoted Tweets within specific search results, giving them access to more precise targeting. For example, if you want to promote your Mexican restaurant, you can make your ad appear when a user in your area searches for ‘tacos’ or ‘enchiladas’.
Twitter explained: “Search Keywords Ads differ from other Twitter Keywords campaigns in that they only reach people who are searching for targeted terms when they are searching, offering a stronger signal of intent.”
At the moment, these campaigns will only optimise for conversions to advertiser websites, and they require the integration of the Twitter Pixel or Conversion API (CAPI) to maximise relevance. This new format can be found under the Conversion campaign objective in the Twitter Ads interface.
Today we are rolling out Search Keywords Ads to all advertisers as a beta test 🧵
— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) January 25, 2023
Summary
As well as the ones we’ve covered today, there are plenty more updates and new features being released by Twitter every week during this major overhaul period. We would recommend following @Twitter, @TwitterSupport and @TwitterBusiness (or of course the man himself, @ElonMusk!) to stay up to date with the platform’s latest developments and to check which ones may apply to your business. Need some further advice regarding your brand’s Twitter strategy for 2023? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team and we’ll let you know how we can assist.
