Twitter was taken over by Elon Musk in November 2022, rebranding it as X, the capitalist brought various changes to the platform’s subscription model, causing discontent in its users who had started looking for alternatives to the platform.- LinkedIn, Pebbles, Mastodon, BlueSky, Threads, etc. Some of which already existed before, but only got attention after the date, and some which were launched with an aggressive intention to replace X.
The platform began rolling out US$1 annual charge to new users in New Zealand and Philippines earlier in October 2023, it means that the charge has to be paid to use basics features- to post, like, reply, repost, quote posts and bookmark, as per a report by the Guardian published in October 2023. New users who opt out of subscribing will only be able to take ‘read only’ actions, such as: read posts, watch videos, and follow accounts.
However, LinkedIn, though very different in terms of type of audience that engages on the platform than on Twitter, seems to be lucrative now even in terms of its basic features.
Features on LinkedIn and Twitter available with subscription
As of now, one can post, repost, like, comment on X with its non-subscription plan, however, this for the old users. The subscription plan, which was rolled out last year, has three tier- basic, premium, premium+. While the basic subscription provides features like editing post, longer posts and longer video uploads, reply to prioritization, text formatting, etc, Premium allows for blue checkmark, reduced ads, creator subscriptions, larger reply to prioritization, ID verification, and so on. The third-tier subscription allows for all Premium features with additional but useless benefits like no ads in the For You and Following timelines, largest reply to prioritization.
Along with the blue verification badge, the platforms also have Verified Organizations, which is a service for businesses, governments and non-profits on X that comes with a gold or grey checkmark, affiliate badges, premium support, impersonation defence and more features for organizations.
On LinkedIn, one can edit post without any extra charge, a facility which is only available on X with its premium subscription. The word limit here is 3000 characters while of 280 characters without any subscription.
What makes LinkedIn more lucrative?
The first and the foremost thing which has made LinkedIn far more attractive than X, is their verification badge which is available that to without any subscription. On April 12, 2023, LinkedIn started this new feature available to all their members, which can be simply done by verifying their government id, or phone number. Users around the world also have the option to verify where they work with their company email.
The added advantage here, over X has always been that the connections made are always mutual, i.e., if one connects with the other on LinkedIn, they in return do get one in return. The “follow” option is also a choice, where if one wishes not to connect but can allow the other one to follow. More importantly, the platform is not new like many other alternatives which need to be advertised and attract new users, it is more likely that most of the users who are on X are also on LinkedIn, given its user-friendly nature, who are also there for “job-search”.
LinkedIn definitely seems to be user-friendly than X, however, the users on the latter still seems to look for alternatives on other platforms which can promise to be more “Twitter-like” and not as formal as LinkedIn.