Twitter has introduced a limit on the number of messages you can read in a day. Owner Elon Musk’s move has drawn widespread criticism from users, and experts warn that it will become more difficult for Twitter to attract advertisers.
Paid users can view a maximum of 6,000 posts per day. For non-paying users, Twitter set the limit at 600 messages. New, free accounts can now even read 300 posts, and it is also new that you must be logged in for this. According to CEO Musk, this “temporary emergency measure” is necessary “to prevent extreme amounts of data scraping (massive automatic data collection, ed.) And manipulation” that would slow down the system.
For that reason, Twitter had already made it impossible for people without an account to read messages on Friday. Many Twitter users are angry about the intervention. Last weekend, they expressed dissatisfaction with the hashtag #RIPTwitter on the platform.
Many Twitter users reported outages on the platform over the weekend. For example, several people received the message ‘Sorry, but your account is limited. Wait a moment and then try again.” It was not immediately clear whether that had to do with the changes to the site, or simply means that users had already reached their daily limit.
Mike Proulx, director of research at Forrester, said the move isn’t just bad news for regular users. According to him, companies that use Twitter to advertise are unhappy with this. After all, fewer people can now read the messages they send via Twitter. According to Proulx, many companies are already shocked by the “chaos” Musk has caused at Twitter since taking over. This is added to that.
Jasmine Enberg, chief analyst at Insider Intelligence, thinks the move could be “catastrophic” for Twitter’s advertising business. “This certainly won’t make it any easier to convince advertisers to return. It is already difficult to bring advertisers back.” It is not yet known how long the limit will apply.
This puts Linda Yaccarino, the former advertising chief of NBCUniversal who started as Twitter’s top woman last month, in a difficult position. Lou Paskalis, the founder of advertising consultancy AJL Advisory and former marketing executive at Bank of America, says Yaccarino is Musk’s “last best hope” to save ad revenue and, in effect, the company. But this move by Musk would show his inability to provide her with the means to “save him from himself.”
