Microsoft removes Twitter from its social media tool for advertisers

Starting on April 25th, advertisers using Microsoft’s social media management tool will no longer be able to access Twitter on their dashboard. As Mashable has first reported, the tech giant has announced on its Advertising platform page that its Digital Marketing Center’s Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform tool will no longer support the social network in a few days’ time. The announcement comes almost a month after Twitter revealed how much users will have to pay to access its API. While the company wasn’t that forthcoming when it came to pricing for enterprise customers, Wired previously reported that the cheapest package available for them cost $42,000 a month. 

Although Microsoft could easily afford to pay that, it seems to have chosen to drop Twitter instead. Removing support for the website on its social media management tool means advertisers will no longer be able to use it to create, manage or schedule draft tweets, as well as to view past tweets and engagements. Microsoft has noted in its announcement that other social media channels, such as “Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn will continue to be available.”

After Microsoft’s announcement, Elon Musk responded to a tweet reporting its decision with a threat to take legal action against the company. “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” Twitter’s owner wrote. He didn’t elaborate on how Microsoft illegally trained anything using Twitter data, but it’s worth noting that the tech giant is a key backer of ChatGPT developer OpenAI. The executive co-founded OpenAI back in 2015, but he distanced himself from the organization and has been vocally criticizing the chatbot and AI as a whole as of late. Musk also recently revealed his plans for his own AI company that could rival OpenAI and Google. 

Whether Musk’s lawsuit threat would actually materialize remains to be seen. Regardless, Microsoft’s decision came at a very bad time for Twitter. The website has been steadily losing advertisers since Musk took over, and according to digital marketing analysis firm Pathmatics by Sensor Tower, less than half of its top 1,000 advertisers spent money on ads in January.