Microsoft, a tech company, has revealed plans to remove Twitter from its Smart Campaigns advertising platform.
In a press release posted on the firm website, as of April 25, Twitter will no longer be supported by the platform that allows ad purchasers to manage their numerous social media accounts.
“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.”
However, other social media platforms such as Meta’s Facebook, and Instagram, as well as Microsoft’s LinkedIn will continue to be available on the advert service.
While no explanations were given, Microsoft’s decision comes after Twitter announced fees for access to its Application Programming Interface.
Twitter’s API, which provides third parties with broad access to data that users have chosen to share publicly, was previously free.
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.
