Twitter Adds ‘Delegates’ Functionality to Replace TweetDeck Teams

Good news for those who use TweetDeck’s Teams functionality to manage their Twitter accounts, with the option effectively now integrated into the regular Twitter desktop app, as Twitter looks to make TweetDeck a subscriber-only feature.

As reported by T(w)itter Daily News, some users are now able to access a new ‘Twitter Delegates’ functionality in the main app, which is essentially the same as TweetDeck teams.

Via Delegates, you can assign account permissions to other users, which will then enable them to post to the selected accounts, making it easier to manage your process.

A key concern with the recent announcement that TweetDeck was shifting to a paid user exclusive was that users would lose access to Teams, which many now rely on in their daily Twitter management. But it looks like Delegates will fill this need, even for non-paying users (at least at this stage), as Twitter works to update and upgrade Tweetdeck as a paid offering.

So good news for current TweetDeck users – though if Twitter can add some new analytics features and improved tools, it could be a valuable enough tool to justify signing up for Twitter Blue anyway, which I’ve long maintained is a more viable pathway to driving subscription revenue than offering more flimsy incentives, like verification ticks.

Gutting the previous verification system has been a bad move, which has led to more confusion and misrepresentation in the app. While conversely, many third-party Twitter analytics tools offer way better functionality than Twitter itself, and Twitter could easily incorporate the same into its own business offerings, in order to increase the appeal of its Blue for Business package.

Elon has said that improved analytics options are coming, in line with recent upgrades in tweet analytics presentation, so maybe that will be the next step, in providing more tweet management options within TweetDeck.

We’ll have to wait and see, but for now, it seems that you won’t lose access to Twitter Teams once TweetDeck becomes a paid-only option sometime next month.