Quick Links
Since Twitter’s inception in 2007, the microblogging platform now known as X has seen a plethora of features come and go. It’s the case with any website or app that features will be tested, launched, and eventually killed, but that doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea.
As many people leave X for other platforms like Bluesky, which is fairly new and doesn’t yet have all the features I’d like to see from it, I’ve been thinking about old features on X that I loved. Here are some of the best features X killed.
1 Twitter Circles
Circles allowed users to make posts specifically for a small, private audience. It was a lot like Close Friends stories on Instagram, but for microblogging. Sometimes, you’d want to say something snarky to a small group of people, and it was perfect for that. It was also a good alternative to making a second private account if you have a large public following.
X deprecated Circles on October 31, 2023, after only a couple of years of the feature’s existence. X owner Elon Musk said that instead, X would focus on improving Communities and group DMs, but it’s just not the same. You can still view your own old Circles posts, as well as others that you were privy to. Long live Circles.
2 Visible Likes
Lurking people’s likes was one of the great joys of my life. Especially after the timeline was adjusted to no longer show posts liked by people you follow, looking through likes made it easier to find posts that were relevant to you. If you follow someone who has similar interests to you, you could probably find some great things in their likes. It was also useful for collecting dirt on people, but I liked it for finding posts I’d like more than ones I’d hate.
Likes were made private on June 13, 2024, much to the chagrin of many X users. Likes were made private so people would feel more free to express themselves, according to Elon Musk. While maybe this was the case for some, it didn’t change the way I interact with posts at all, and I deeply miss like-lurking.
3 Fleets
Fleets were a very fleeting feature. It was Twitter’s answer to Instagram Stories, launched in late 2020 and deprecated on August 3, 2021. In my experience, it wasn’t used by that many people, but I had a lot of fun with it. My fleets would get very few views, but I was able to have a lot of fun with it, especially since my Twitter following didn’t overlap much with my Instagram following.
The reasoning behind killing Fleets was that people just weren’t using it as much as Twitter expected. This is fair enough; if a feature doesn’t catch on, why not get rid of it? But for me, Fleets will never have been a flop. It was a ton of fun.
4 Device Labels for Tweets
Since the very early days of Twitter, posts used to have a label when you’d expand them to say where it was tweeted from. It would say “Twitter from iPhone,” “Twitter for Android” or something to that effect under your posts. It may seem like a pretty benign feature to deprecate, but it was underappreciated.
First, it was interesting to see which devices people used. Sometimes a politician’s posts would come from various different types of devices, for example instead of the usual Twitter for iPhone label, it would say Twitter for Android. That way, you knew it was a different staffer writing the tweet. People also did some funny things with the labels, like modifying it to say they were tweeting from their smart fridge.
5 The Old Verification System
While the old verification system on X had its issues, it certainly made a lot more sense than anyone being able to pay for it. Celebrities, journalists, and other public figures being verified to ensure you knew you were following the real person and not a fake account was pretty important. Now, anyone can buy a blue check and pass themselves off as a reputable news source, and it’s not hard to bypass the safeguards put in place to prevent impersonation.
Maybe I’m just bitter because I lost my legacy verification, but I also feel like the new verification system is incredibly bad. Allowing any person to get a blue check next to their display name just because it makes them feel special, boosting them in the algorithm, and putting their replies at the top of threads is not very conducive to a good X experience.
6 Link Previews With Headlines, Excerpts, and Bylines
X used to be a great place for journalists to post their own work and boost others, and the old link previews for articles were great. The preview would show the headline, featured image, excerpt, and byline of the author. Essentially, it had everything you needed to know about an article right there, making it more enticing for people to read articles.
Now, link previews have a tiny headline at the bottom of the featured image, and that’s it. You don’t get a lot of context for articles before you click on them. Plus, links are suppressed by the algorithm now, which disincentivizes sharing articles.
7 Free API Access
X used to allow for free API access, meaning developers who wanted to integrate X into their sites and apps, or make third-party apps for X, could do so for free. API access is needed for basically everything that connects X to other services. Thread Reader wouldn’t exist without API access, nor would the ability to connect your X account to other websites.
Since February 2023, access to the API has been behind a paywall, with the cheapest tier being $100 per month, excluding the basically useless free tier. Enterprise access for bigger companies can cost thousands of dollars per month. The hefty price meant a lot of services had to cease, and X is now less of a fun and friendly platform for developers to work with.
I do not expect for these features to return, so instead, I can only look back and mourn the loss of them. Hopefully, Bluesky can take some notes and implement or keep some of these features so that at least one microblogging platform can remain fun.
