Another day, another change at Twitter – and hints of many, many new features to come.
Twitter used to offer a search field even to unregistered users, but this is no longer so (via 9to5Mac(opens in a new tab)). Now, visiting the site without being logged in will only let you scroll through the Explore tab, which offers a curated list of tweets. The search field is gone, and will only reappear after you’ve signed in.
There used to be a search field here.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
The search field does reappear after you click on a tweet, but trying to use it will merely bring up a login prompt.
This forces users to create an account (even if it’s just a throwaway one) to find something on the site, which might be another one of Musk’s tactical moves to increase user count on Twitter.
Note that you can still use Google for Twitter searches by typing “site:twitter.com(opens in a new tab),” followed by your query, into Google Search.
The change comes shortly after Twitter stopped offering free API access; additionally, the company cut API access to some third party app developers who were prepared to pay the new, exorbitant fees.
Meanwhile, in a quick exchange with a few Twitter users, Musk semi-announced the return of several old features, including Periscope, Vine, and Fleets (all three being video-related features that were discontinued at some point).
Musk didn’t offer many details about the potentially upcoming product aside from saying that they’re gonna be different from the “way it was done last time.”
