Twitter and X in 2023: what marketers need to know
Within six months of Elon Musk taking over Twitter in October 2022, more than half of the social networking platform’s top 1,000 advertisers, who represented more than 90% of the company’s revenue, had paused spending on the site.
In the six months after that, Twitter continued its downward spiral into chaos, with widely-publicised mass firings and other such corporate turmoil affecting the website in very obvious ways. There have been entire days when the platform wasn’t able to load tweets at all.
Much of the mayhem since Musk took over and swapped the blue bird for a solitary ‘X’ has been documented comprehensively elsewhere. Instead of retreading the same ground, I (Trapeze Media’s self-proclaimed ‘Twitter Guy’) am going to focus on the question that the digital marketers behind every brand — from the largest retail conglomerates to the smallest local restaurants — have been asking: is marketing on Twitter still worth it in 2023?
The Elon-phant in the room
The role Elon Musk’s controversial politics and volatile leadership have played in scaring away advertisers can’t be ignored. Musk has called himself a ‘free-speech absolutist’, proudly declared himself a ‘troll’, and does little to hide how unpredictable his management of Twitter has been.
Brands like Chevrolet, Chipotle, and Ford stopped running ads on Twitter towards the end of 2022 when, under Musk’s command, the platform reinstated the accounts of several individuals who had been suspended for posting hate speech. This included former United States President Donald Trump, who was suspended on 8th January 2021 after posting tweets which, in context, could be read as an endorsement of the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Politics are subjective, of course, but it’s an objective fact that Musk fired hundreds of Twitter’s content moderators and dissolved the company’s Trust and Safety Council. For a few months, any emails sent to press@twitter.com would receive an auto-reply containing a single solitary poop emoji (💩).
These teams were responsible for ensuring Promoted Tweets from advertisers didn’t appear alongside controversial tweets. After the cuts, this safeguard slipped. Screenshots began circulating showing ads from corporations like Amazon and Uber displayed on the profiles of well-known neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and conspiracy theorists. It’s quite unsurprising, then, that hundreds of big brands pulled their spending.
Musk has projected his personal ideals onto Twitter in a big way, and, though it can feel like an unusual and challenging matter to discuss, the risks associated with his leadership of the website should be considered if you’re thinking about using it as part of a digital marketing strategy.
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What should I say — ‘Twitter’ or ‘X’?
On Sunday 23rd July 2023, without warning, Twitter changed its name to ‘X’. The URL X.com — which was originally the name of an online bank Musk co-founded in 1999, before the company ousted him and changed its name to PayPal — was redirected to Twitter.com, and a black ‘X’ replaced the iconic blue bird.
So, how should digital marketers refer to the platform?
When Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were folded under the ‘Meta’ umbrella in 2021, we kept referring to the individual apps as we always had, but started slowly seeding nods to ‘Meta’ into client-facing documents like strategy decks and reports as familiarity with the new name became widespread.
Twitter/X is a little different, because it’s a complete replacement, not a restructure. Some style guides have recommended ‘X, formerly known as Twitter’. I would agree, but I think there’s a transitional period during which Twitter should come first: ‘Twitter (now known as X)’.
When (or if, given Twitter’s unpredictable future) the new name becomes common enough knowledge, ‘X’ can come first, and maybe, eventually, it can stand by itself. Maybe.
As for how you represent Twitter/X visually, e.g. in social media icons in the footer of your website, perhaps keep the bird a little longer. The ‘X’ doesn’t have mass recognisability yet, and, as I write this, Musk himself has said the logo isn’t final.
What happened to Twitter’s Verification system?
For over a decade, Twitter Verification was a fairly simple concept. Celebrities, journalists, and brands could contact Twitter to verify their identities, and they’d get a blue tick badge on their profiles. Users could identify authentic accounts by looking for the blue tick.
When Elon took over, he merged Verification with Twitter Blue (now known, rather suggestively, as ‘X Premium’), a $4.99-per-month subscription which gave users access to premium features, like the ability to edit recently-posted tweets.
He initially raised the price of Twitter Blue to $20 per month but, after high-profile Twitter fanatics like novelist Stephen King balked at the quadrupled fee, Elon settled on $8 per month.
What followed is a landmark example of the chaotic management that’s marred Twitter/X since Elon’s takeover — a messy chain reaction that marketers should be aware of if they’re considering investing in Twitter as a core channel.
Because Verification was now an open-to-all paid-for feature, anyone could purchase a blue tick and then simply change their profile information to impersonate any individual or brand
For instance, someone bought a Verified tick, updated their account to mimic US insulin producer Eli Lilly, and tweeted that insulin would now be free — this erased (no exaggeration) billions of the real Eli Lilly’s market value
Soon after, Elon announced a different kind of Verification for brands, celebrities, and organisations: a gold tick, that would cost $1,000 per month (around £800)
Additionally, each Verified account affiliated with a core brand account would cost $50 per month
When many public figures refused to pay, Elon gave the top 10,000 most-followed accounts a gold checkmark for free
There’s a handful of other little variables worth noting, like, accounts with gold checkmarks will have square profile pictures (instead of circular ones), and government accounts (e.g. politicians) will have a third type of badge: a grey tick.
For marketers, perhaps the most interesting benefit of the new Verification system is that getting a checkmark now gives your tweets/posts an algorithmic boost, both in the ‘For You’ timeline and in the replies beneath other tweets. You can see this for yourself — look at the responses to any post, and you’ll notice all the Verified accounts appear first.
This has proven to be something of a double-edged sword, however. The Verified checkmark has been deemed a badge of shame in the eyes of much of Twitter’s user base — a symbol representing everything that’s gone wrong with the platform. The very phrase ‘blue checkmark’ has become such a derogatory label, Twitter have quietly given X Premium subscribers the option to hide their ticks, so they can access additional features without risking ridicule.
There’s one other reason marketers will want to be aware of the new Verification system, and it relates to...
TweetDeck — now called ‘X Pro’ — is no longer free
Admittedly, it’s quite remarkable that a tool as powerful as TweetDeck remained completely free for more than 10 years. Now, the multi-column sanctuary for social media managers everywhere has been renamed ‘X Pro’ and turned into an X Premium subscriber exclusive.
If you’re managing an account which calls for any kind of live social listening, such as a festival, a restaurant chain, or any kind of news outlet, TweetDeck (X Pro) is still absolutely worth it, even if seeing a price tag on it stings a little after a decade of free access.
However, some users have expressed their suspicion that, as Elon strives to flip Twitter/X into a profitable investment, TweetDeck/X Pro could easily be valued higher, and paywalling it behind X Premium may simply be the first step towards a loftier subscription fee. Especially since...
A lot of third-party Twitter tools no longer work, after X’s API changes
Quick definition: an API is a system through which applications can ‘speak’ to one another. It’s how a social media scheduling tool can send posts to various different platforms, for example.
Many analytics, scheduling, and research apps were killed in early 2023 when Twitter priced them out of API access, charging as much as $42,000 (around £33,000) per month at enterprise scale.
Thankfully, Twitter have direct corporate partnerships with larger social media management tools like Sprout, so, as I write this, many broad-use industry-standard tools are safe.
But, for much of the independent developer community, creating bespoke applications for niche sectors of the marketing industry is no longer viable.
What if Twitter becomes an entirely paid service?
In September 2023, Elon said during a livestream: “We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system.” While Musk’s erratic propositions often don’t come to fruition, it’s worth considering whether including Twitter (now ‘X’) in your marketing strategies is work the risk, as turning the social network into a subscription-only platform will diminish your potential audience on the site down to a fraction of what it once could have been.
While some brands may still find some success within a paywalled online space, for many service-based businesses which rely on Twitter (‘X’) for delivering open-to-all real-time updates, a walled-garden model will render the platform completely unusable.
What actually is Twitter, and why do people use it?
I find that, nearly two decades since its conception, Twitter is still one of the platforms that most often makes clients pause for thought when discussing which channels they should be using.
Why? Because many brands and products are better-suited for marketing through visuals than text, and whilst apps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest prioritise photos and videos, Twitter is — and always has been — very text-dominant.
The majority of frequent Twitter users stay on the platform for the real-time informational value it provides. That’s why it’s always been so popular with sports fanatics, music/TV/movie fanbases, news/politics commentators, and people who want to know if the internet is down in their neighbourhood.
So, before deciding if Twitter (or, X) is still right for your business, you should consider whether it’s ever been a good fit. After all, it’s better to have a strong presence on one platform than a weak presence on several.
To summarise what makes Twitter distinct from most other platforms (‘most’, because clones like Instagram Threads have begun popping up):
Posts on Twitter are called tweets (or, they were until the X rebrand — more on that below), and they’re a maximum of 280 characters (formerly 140, but also, some users can post longer tweets — again, more on that in a minute), and can have images, videos, links, and polls attached.
Unlike most other social networks, Twitter has always kept its main timeline almost completely chronological, but did introduce an algorithmic ‘For You’ feed a few months into Musk’s tenure.
Conversations on Twitter are very open and organic. On Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, comments on posts only go two layers deep: the comment, and all the replies. On Twitter, everyone can reply to everything, so discussions effortlessly spill out into an infinite sprawl. That’s the first reason it’s so good for real-time updates.
A second reason: threading. You can thread tweets together, and doing so will resurface the first tweet in the thread on your followers’ timelines. Perfect for developing stories or long-term conversations. No other platform comes close.
So, should marketers use Twitter (now ‘X’) in 2023?
Twitter has proven to be incredibly resilient through all of this chaos, and that’s because there’s really nothing else that offers what it offers.
Looking at a chart of the most popular social platforms, it might seem like it’s the ‘smallest of the largest’, but, because of its unique architecture, functionality, and culture, it’s more a case of being the ‘largest of the smallest’.
And, if your brand’s content and purpose aligns with the things Twitter does best — real-time information, fandom/hyperlocal communities, frictionless communication — then it still might be a powerful cog in your marketing machine.
Approach Twitter/X with caution and, if you want to chat about whether it’s right for you, book a (free) call below.
