Twitter is testing new ways to kneecap itself this week while simultaneously attempting the pull off the classic pivot to video meme. This is apparently an emergency measure…
Since the dawn of the Twitterverse, public tweets have behaved like blog entries on the web and not like Facebook posts. No need to create an account or log in to see what someone has published.
That’s changed today as Twitter now reroutes tweet links to the account creation page if you’re not logged in to the service. The intent seems clear: increase new account creations. If you’re already logged in, links to tweets behave the same – except where they don’t.
Locking tweets behind an account wall breaks previews in iMessage and Slack (on purpose this time), and it breaks Twitter in places that you might view tweets without the ability to log in (like RSS).
Just add this change to the pile of trash for the dumpster fire that started with eliminating third-party Twitter clients and recently added nuking our ability to automatically tweet stories.
The tweet wall may come down soon, though, as Elon Musk called it an emergency measure against data pirates or something.
Meanwhile, Twitter is accelerating its pivot to video that Apple has helped start. Twitter for iPhone is rolling out the ability to watch video outside of the app using picture-in-picture mode. The move comes just as Apple took advantage of Twitter’s new long form video feature by releasing a full episode of an Apple TV+ show for free.
Just make sure you’re logged in to see it.
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