Twitter pulls ‘unsustainable’ Periscope app
Twitter has announced plans to shut down its live-streaming app Periscope after seeing a decline in usage.
The app has been in an “unsustainable maintenance-mode state… for a while”, Twitter said in a blog post. “Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time.”
The company introduced the live-streaming app in 2015 and will now bring most of Periscope’s core capabilities into Twitter. Broadcasts that were shared to Twitter will remain on the site as replays and broadcasters will be able to download their archive.
“We probably would have made this decision sooner if it weren’t for all of the projects we reprioritised due to the events of 2020,” the company added.
“The capabilities and ethos of the Periscope team and infrastructure already permeate Twitter, and we’re confident that live video still has the potential of seeing an even wider audience within the Twitter product.”
Periscope will be removed from app stores by March 2021 but it is already preventing new account signups starting in the latest update to the apps, which is rolling out today.
Twitter bought Periscope in March 2015 but it did not take off like other live streaming services such as Twitch.
Twitter later integrated live video into the main Twitter app in 2016, in a feature that was described as being “powered by Periscope”.