SAN FRANCISCO (dpa-AFX) – Elon Musk’s Twitter has a new problem in its advertising business. A platform from Microsoft US5949181045, which allows advertisers to manage their activity on online services, will no longer support Twitter accounts. The software giant gave no reason for the move. However, it comes shortly before a change in the Twitter pricing model for interface access comes into effect. Corporate customers should pay at least 42,000 dollars a month for this. That was already too expensive for many smaller developers.
For example, without access to Twitter interfaces, software from other providers cannot publish tweets on the platform. The Microsoft service allows users to write and publish posts and see how popular they have been. The functions will work as before on Facebook, Instagram and the career network LinkedIn.
Twitter owner Elon Musk then claimed that Microsoft had “illegally” accessed data from the online software training service. “Time for a lawsuit,” he added. The tech billionaire did not specify the allegation. Microsoft entered into a multi-billion dollar pact with the start-up OpenAI, which, among other things, developed the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Traditionally, most of Twitter’s business has come from advertising. After the Musk acquisition, there was a churn of advertisers. He now hopes more for subscription revenues from users and companies.
Part of the plan for this is that the verification symbol with a white tick on a blue background, which was previously given free to prominent users, should only be available for paying subscription customers. Twitter confirmed on Wednesday that previously given free ticks should be removed on Thursday. Musk had previously announced this for April 1st. The old ticks actually verified the identity of the person behind the account. With the new model, this only applies to companies who should also pay significantly more money for their golden tick: 950 euros per month instead of 9.52 euros for individual users.
