Microsoft, a leading tech company, has announced that it will be dropping Twitter from its advertisement platform, Smart Campaigns.
In a release on the company's website, it was stated that as of April 25, 2023, the Smart Campaigns platform, which allows ad buyers to manage their various social media accounts, will no longer support Twitter.
The release further stated that as of April 25, users will be unable to access their Twitter account through the social management tool, create and manage drafts or tweets, view past tweets and engagement, and schedule tweets.
However, other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn will continue to be available on the advert service.
While Microsoft did not provide any explanation for its decision, it comes after Twitter announced that it would be charging a monthly fee of $42,000 for access to its Application Programming Interface (API), which was previously free.
The API provides third parties with broad access to data that users have chosen to share publicly.
This decision by Microsoft may have been influenced by Twitter's new fee for API access. However, it remains to be seen whether this move will have any significant impact on Twitter's revenue or usage.
However, the company announced recently that it would begin charging a monthly fee of $42,000 for access in a bid to raise its revenue.
Reacting to the news on Wednesday, Twitter’s CEO, Elon Musk, made it known that he will be taking legal action. He also alleged that Microsoft illegally used Twitter’s data for “training”.
“They trained illegally, using Twitter’s data. Lawsuit time,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
When asked by a tweep, @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.
He however doubled down on his claims that the IT company was “ripping off” data from Twitter.
“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.
