In a recent development, Microsoft has made an announcement stating that it will no longer support social media platform, Twitter, on its Smart Campaigns advertisement platform.
POLITICS NIGERIA understands that the move will take effect from April 25, and was communicated through the company’s website.
“Starting on April 25, 2023, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no longer support Twitter,” the release read. “As of April 25, 2023, you’ll be unable to: access your Twitter account through our social management tool, create and manage drafts or tweets, view past tweets and engagement, and schedule tweets,” the statement read.
Smart Campaigns allows ad buyers to manage various social media accounts but will no longer support Twitter. However, other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn will still be available.
No reasons were given for the decision, but it comes after Twitter announced fees for access to its Application Programming Interface (API).
The API allows third parties to access data that users have chosen to share publicly. Previously, this was free, but the company recently introduced a monthly fee of $42,000 to increase revenue.
Twitter’s CEO, Elon Musk, has reacted to the news by stating that he plans to take legal action against Microsoft. He alleged that the company had illegally used Twitter’s data for “training”.
“They trained illegally, using Twitter’s data. Lawsuit time,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
When asked by a Twitter user, @Krassestien, if he has other long-term plans such as charging for access to its API will reduce traffic to the platform, Musk replied that he is open to ideas.
“I’m open to ideas, but ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others isn’t a winning solution,” he said.
