21 August 2023
Elon Musk admits that X (Formerly Twitter) “may fail”
Over the weekend, a glitch on X caused pictures and videos to be removed from users' posts made before December 2014, leaving nothing behind but broken links.
After the glitch occured, X's eccentric owner Elon Musk posted on the site: “The sad truth is that there are no great 'social networks' right now.”
He added that the platform “may fail”. Technologist Tom Coates referred to the glitch as “epic vandalism by Musk” and suggested it could be a cost-saving exercise. Other users of the platform also speculated that the glitch was caused by an effort to save costs on storage data.
source: The Guardian
24 July 2023
Twitter is re-branded as X
Elon Musk has rebranded Twitter with an X. Gone is the iconic blue bird, in its place a “minimalist art deco” X. The “X” has long been an obsession of Musk's. It's also the name given to the “everything app” that he's planning to launch.
Twitter's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, confirmed the choice on Monday by tweeting “X is here! Let’s do this.” along with an image of the new logo.
Mike Proulx, research director at the analysis firm Forrester said: “By changing Twitter's app name, Elon Musk will have singlehandedly wiped out over 15 years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon.” He added: &lquo;This is an extremely risky move, because with 'X', Musk is essentially starting over while its competition is afoot.”
source: The Guardian
2 July 2023
Elon Musk announces temporary reading limits for all Twitter users
Elon Musk has announced a temporary cap on the number of tweets users can read each day, with verified subscribers (those with a blue tick) limited to 8,000, unverified to 1,000. New accounts are limited to 500. Initially, these limits were much lower.
Musk tweeted: “ To address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation, we've applied the following temporary limits...”
These limitations were imposed shortly after people had discovered that you now have to be logged in to access Twitter. This move Musk called a “temporary emergency measure”.
source: Sky News
9 May 2023
Twitter plans to remove and archive inactive accounts
In a move heavily criticised online, Musk has announced plans that dormant accounts may be deleted from Twitter, citing that it was “important to free up abandoned handles [user accounts]”. People have expressed concerns about losing access to accounts of relative who had died, and that it may risk losing information of important historical information.
Twitter has always had an inactive account policy, which required users to log-in at least once every size month, although this recently changed to every 30 days. Mr Musk hinted that removal may be avoided as old accounts would be archived rather than deleted.
source: BBC