Twitter changes: Is this end of the road for ‘influencers’?

Twitter has made far-reaching changes on its platform in an effort to rid the social networking giant of what it terms “malicious activity”.

Among the changes is the crackdown on accounts suspected to be powered by automated ‘bots’.

TWEETDECK

"These changes are an important step in ensuring we stay ahead of malicious activity targeting the crucial conversations taking place on Twitter — including elections in the United States and around the world," Twitter developer policy head Yoel Roth wrote in a blog.

But of concern to the so called ‘influencers’ on Twitter is the move by the company to restrict tweets from multiple accounts at once using TweetDeck, a web based social media dashboard that allows users to connect multiple accounts for easier management.

‘‘Today, we’re also introducing changes to TweetDeck’s multiple account functionality to reflect this guidance. Users of TweetDeck will no longer be able to select multiple accounts through which to perform an action such as Tweeting, Retweeting, liking, or following’’ added Yoel.

EFFECTS

For starters, TweetDeck previously allowed a user to craft a single tweet and simultaneously send it out to multiple accounts— some would have more than 100 accounts— just at the click of a button.

This would give the underlined subject a higher chance of trending on Twitter 

With these changes, it will be very difficult for ‘influencers’ who often used this method to trend topics on Twitter and subsequently earn from social media marketing.

Put differently, moving forward, a user will have to select each of their account to either tweet, retweet like or follow at a time, making it an arduous task for ‘influencers’ to push content.

On the upper hand, it now means that conversations and trends on Twitter should take on a more subtle, spam-free direction.