The decision by Elon Musk to implement a temporary limit on the number of posts Twitter users can view may complicate efforts by Linda Yaccarino, the platform’s new Chief Executive, to woo back advertisers, experts in the marketing field have indicated.
On Saturday, Musk revealed that Twitter would restrict the number of tweets various accounts can read daily, aiming to address what he described as “extreme levels” of data scraping and manipulation of the site.
Following the announcement, users shared screenshots demonstrating their inability to access tweets, including those from corporate advertisers, after reaching the imposed limits.
Marketing veterans expressed concerns that this move poses a significant hurdle for Yaccarino, who previously served as NBCUniversal’s advertising chief and took on her role at Twitter last month.
According to a report from the Financial Times, Yaccarino is actively working to mend the company’s relationships with advertisers who distanced themselves from the platform following Musk’s acquisition last year.
Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, criticized the new limits, calling them “remarkably bad” for both users and advertisers who are already unsettled by the unpredictability Musk has brought to the platform.
“The advertiser trust deficit that Linda Yaccarino needs to reverse just got even bigger. And it cannot be reversed based on her industry credibility alone,” he remarked.
Lou Paskalis, founder of AJL Advisory and former marketing leader at Bank of America, characterized Yaccarino as Musk’s “last best hope” for recovering advertising revenue and enhancing the company’s overall value.
Paskalis noted, “This move signals to the marketplace that he’s not capable of empowering her to save him from himself.”
Under the newly established restrictions, unverified accounts were initially allowed to read 600 posts daily, while new unverified accounts had a limit of 300. Verified accounts, on the other hand, were set to have access to 6,000 posts a day, according to Musk’s statement on the platform.
Shortly after, he adjusted the caps to allow verified accounts a limit of 10,000 posts per day, while unverified users could read 1,000 tweets and new unverified accounts could access 500 posts daily.
A representative from Twitter did not respond to inquiries regarding the duration of these limitations on Sunday.
Industry expert Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, described the cap on user viewing as potentially “catastrophic” for the platform’s advertising revenue.
“This certainly isn’t going to make it any easier to convince advertisers to return. It’s a hard sell already to bring advertisers back,” she stated.
The viewing cap followed Twitter’s requirement for users to log into their accounts to view tweets, a measure Musk labeled as a “temporary emergency” to combat data scraping activities.
Previously, Musk had voiced his dissatisfaction with AI companies like OpenAI, which he accused of using Twitter’s data to train their language models without permission.
This concern is echoed by various platforms, including Reddit and several major news organizations, which have raised alarms about AI firms using their content, often seeking to impose fees.
Kai-Cheng Yang, a researcher at Indiana University, noted that the new limits seem effective in preventing third-party entities, including search engines, from extracting Twitter data as they did in the past.
“It might still be possible, but the methods would be much more sophisticated and much less efficient,” he explained.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
