Twitter is shutting down Periscope app, its once quintessential live video app for streaming.
Twitter has announced that it has begun to close its Periscope app. By March 2021, the app will cease to function, just six years after it was acquired by the social network. What was once the quintessential app for streaming live videos has taken a back seat as Twitter has implemented its functionalities directly into its native app.
Twitter is shutting down Periscope due to maintenance costs
Twitter has announced that they will close Periscope as a service and the apps will cease to work as of March 2021. Although Periscope will not be completely closed until March, they are already blocking any new user registrations with the latest update of the mobile apps, which were updated today.
Current users will be able to continue using the app until March 2021 and until then they will have the opportunity to download a file of all their videos and data before the app closes completely. Finally, it is important to note that the Periscope website will remain open and will serve to showcase the catalog of public videos that have been recorded so far.
Reason for closing? Maintenance cost, according to Twitter. “In the last two years, we have seen a decrease in use and we know that the cost of maintaining the application will only continue to increase over time,” they say in official statements. This cost is not increased, but rather that revenue has stopped coming due to the lack of users and migration with other platforms.
Twitter acquired Periscope in March 2015 when the app had not yet been launched, but it was known to have enormous potential as Merkat (a similar app from the developers who later created Houseparty) was growing in popularity. With the support of Twitter and direct integration into the social network, Periscope grew enormously and has been very useful for streaming live videos from smartphones.
The alternative will be Twitter Live
Although Twitter was the ideal place for Periscope to be used for the design of the platform to offer fast and direct information, the company itself has decided to close the service. However, this is not the end of live videos for Twitter. In December 2016 the platform launched its own functionality in Twitter apps to broadcast live in a similar way to what Periscope did.
Most of Periscope’s features have been imported to Twitter Live as well, and now the company itself is urging people to use Twitter Live instead of Periscope. Its closure was to come sooner rather than later and has finally been confirmed. However, live videos are no longer as popular as they once were on Twitter, being now more of a Twitch thing and platforms like YouTube.
