Back in October of 2022, Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk for approximately 44 billion dollars; and the chief executive officer of the social media platform has since announced a number of measures to monetize the company — but as part of the collateral damage of that effort, Air France and other companies have been either abandoning Twitter altogether, or reducing the services which they had offered.
Air France and Other Companies Abandoning Twitter — Or Reducing Service
The following announcement recently appeared on the official Twitter account of Air France:
Since Twitter has changed their conditions, our customer service by direct message on this network is unavailable. Our servicing teams remains available on our other channels bit.ly/3oPKCLP We thank you for your understanding.
Since Twitter has changed their conditions, our customer service by direct message on this network is unavailable. Our servicing teams remains available on our other channels https://t.co/DHaYPKvkuI
We thank you for your understanding. pic.twitter.com/bLHYHjS57H— Air France (@airfrance) April 28, 2023
Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the City of New York
The following announcement recently appeared on the official Internet web site of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which serves the city of New York:
The MTA does not pay tech platforms to publish service information and has built redundant tools that provide service alerts in real time. Those include the MYmta and TrainTime apps, the MTA’s homepage at MTA.info, email alerts and text messages. Service alerts are also available on thousands of screens in stations, on trains and in buses. The MTA has terminated posting service information to Twitter, effective immediately, as the reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.
The statement pertaining to suspending the use of Twitter for service alerts was attributed to Shanifah Rieara, who is the acting chief customer officer and senior advisor of communications and policy at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which was reportedly asked by the social media company to pay $50,000.00 per month to continue accessing its application programming interface.
Customers will continue to be able to send messages via Twitter at all accounts which are maintained by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, with questions and requests for help as they have before; and those requests will continue to receive responses. The @MTA account will remain active for branding and other messaging.
BoardingArea is Even Affected
A comprehensive suite of tools which BoardingArea uses includes the functionality of automatically sharing articles on Twitter — but an announcement from that company which created the suite of tools blamed Twitter of dramatically changing the terms and pricing of the application programming interface on short notice: “We have attempted to work with Twitter in good faith to negotiate new terms, but we have not been able to reach an agreement. As a result, we will need to remove the functionality.”
Access was reportedly removed by Twitter on Sunday, April 30, 2023 — but the bloggers at BoardingArea will still be able to share their posts to Twitter manually by pasting the post link into the body of their messages on Twitter.
Final Boarding Call
Opinions pertaining to Twitter in general have been deeply divided both politically and financially over the past six months or so since Elon Musk acquired the social media platform and became its chief executive officer — although Musk claimed that his dog is actually the chief executive officer of the company during this recent impromptu interview with a reporter, which can be seen in its entirety here.
I am not hugely into using social media in general; but I have found that Twitter is a good place to get answers and assistance quickly from the social media teams at travel companies — as well as offer a written record of the issue, question, or problem. To see this functionality disappear would be a significant loss.
Whether other companies in the travel industry will follow Air France is uncertain at this time; but what is clear is that the issue is all about a significant increase in money to continue to do business as before.
In the meantime, please follow the official Twitter account of The Gate With Brian Cohen here.
Source: Twitter.
