TweetDeck announced last night that it will soon retire its mobile apps for iOS and Android, as well as its AIR desktop client, turning its focus instead to developing its browser-based versions.
“To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone,” reads the post on The TweetDeck Blog.
In early May, users will no longer see TweetDeck apps appearing in the App Store or on Google Play and functionality will stop shortly thereafter.
In the same blog post, TweetDeck also announces, “We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.” No more elaboration on this point is given, but users of the service that once allowed them to manage all of their social media accounts at once will certainly have their noses put out of joint by this revelation.
The end? Or a new beginning?
This is the end to TweetDeck that was predicted back in 2011, when it was bought by Twitter for US$40m. In the past year, Twitter has become increasingly blocked off to third-party clients, instead trying to drive traffic to its website – where its advertising, and its revenue stream, is.
TweetDeck claims the change is for the benefit of the majority of its users, saying that trends show that people prefer to use TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on mobile devices. However, it also apologises to those users for whom this is not the case for the coming inconvenience.
TweetDeck’s AIR desktop client and mobile app versions rely on v1.0 of Twitter’s API, which is being retired this month, so users of these services won’t even get to enjoy their final days as some outages can be expected over the next two months.
Going forward, TweetDeck will continue to develop its web-based application and its Chrome app first and foremost, followed by its native Mac and Windows clients.
