Elon Musk has announced that Twitter is cancelling accounts that have been inactive for many years
Making the announcement regarding inactive accounts, Elon Musk tweeted, “We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop.”
Reacting to responses on the move by Twitter to purge inactive accounts, Elon Musk tweeted, “The accounts will be archived. But it is important to free up abandoned handles.”
Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter on October 27, 2022, after acquiring the social media company for $44 billion. He tweeted a video of himself walking into the Twitter Headquarters in San Francisco while holding a bathroom sink. He captioned it, “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” Much has changed at the micro blogging site since the mega Musk takeover
Elon Musk made the Twitter Blue verified tick a paid subscription for users and opened it up for individuals to sign up. The ‘Blue Tick’ was originally a differentiator for handles of companies, politicians, brands, celebrities and accounts "of public interest" to ensure that information shared was from the actual source
Twitter allows verified organisations to be qualified to receive a gold checkmark while a grey checkmark is awarded to government agencies, major media outlets, and some public figures. Organisations can also choose to affiliate any individual or entity associated with them so an affiliated account receives verification as well as an affiliate badge, a small image of their parent company's profile picture, displayed next to their checkmark
On April 30, Elon Musk announced a way for media publishers to earn from articles shared on Twitter. “Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per article basis with one click. This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article. Should be a major win-win for both media orgs & the public," tweeted Musk
On the opposite spectrum of the 280 character limit on Twitter, the maximum tweet length for Twitter Blue subscribers was raised to 10,000 characters along with support for bold and italic text. The For You timeline allows users to control what appears in their timeline so that tweets from accounts, topics they follow and recommended tweets show up
Twitter launched View Count, which allows users to check how many times a tweet has been seen. Discussing this feature, Elon Musk tweeted, “Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.”