The problem is not really with what they've taken out (although pretty much killing TweetDeck still stings), but instead added to the overall experience.
* I'll click a tweet and immediately below it there will be an unrelated "Promoted Tweet". In the same place replies would normally be, so I always need to do a double take to see whether it's a reply or an ad.
* I'll look at my list and it'll always show a list of tweets out of order, the "While you were away" feature. The weird thing is that you can dismiss it, and then it asks you if you liked it; I always say no, but it keeps reappearing.
* They were recently inserting tweets from people I don't follow in my timeline because they were "popular". I think they changed that feature now, but it was very confusing at first.
* Promoted Tweets show way too often and are too similar to real Tweets.
* "Moments" is a joke. I used to like Twitter for live events (normally with just a search) and was excited to have a feature dedicated to that need, but they completely missed the point by making something that is hard to follow and not even close to real time. It's barely usable. That's what made me realize they have no idea what they're doing.
I like to follow a small group of people. My experience is a bit curated. But nowadays, almost everything I do on the mobile or web app will show me content I don't care about. The fact that none of it is controllable by the user (like the "While you were away" feature) is infuriating. This is not even related to ad revenue, it's just a point of user experience they decided to break completely.
I have moved away from the official clients and the experience is a little bit better. Doesn't change the fact that the platform is clearly moving away from the use case that made it popular in the first place, at least for me.
* I'll click a tweet and immediately below it there will be an unrelated "Promoted Tweet". In the same place replies would normally be, so I always need to do a double take to see whether it's a reply or an ad.
* I'll look at my list and it'll always show a list of tweets out of order, the "While you were away" feature. The weird thing is that you can dismiss it, and then it asks you if you liked it; I always say no, but it keeps reappearing.
* They were recently inserting tweets from people I don't follow in my timeline because they were "popular". I think they changed that feature now, but it was very confusing at first.
* Promoted Tweets show way too often and are too similar to real Tweets.
* "Moments" is a joke. I used to like Twitter for live events (normally with just a search) and was excited to have a feature dedicated to that need, but they completely missed the point by making something that is hard to follow and not even close to real time. It's barely usable. That's what made me realize they have no idea what they're doing.
I like to follow a small group of people. My experience is a bit curated. But nowadays, almost everything I do on the mobile or web app will show me content I don't care about. The fact that none of it is controllable by the user (like the "While you were away" feature) is infuriating. This is not even related to ad revenue, it's just a point of user experience they decided to break completely.
I have moved away from the official clients and the experience is a little bit better. Doesn't change the fact that the platform is clearly moving away from the use case that made it popular in the first place, at least for me.