Twitter has just killed its versions of TweetDeck for iPhone, Android and its AIR app for desktops. TweetDeck is also losing its Facebook integration completely.
The team blog post says that “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.”
This means that TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone will all be removed from their stores in May and will completely stop working after that. Twitter also calls out the fact that the apps all rely on v1.0 of its API and would need to be converted to v1.1.
“Over the past few years,” says the TweetDeck team, “we’ve seen a steady trend towards people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices.” Those needs, apparently, will be filled by Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android and whatever features are available in the web version of TweetDeck.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
Twitter acquired TweetDeck in May of 2011 for over $40M in cash and stock. The company was founded by Iain Dodsworth in 2008 and was based in London, Great Britain. TweetDeck had taken a total of $3.8m in funding when it was acquired.
Note that, tucked away in the blog post, is a notice that TweetDeck will also lose integration with Facebook completely. “We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration,” says the post, perfunctorily. This is an interesting move and another data point in the continuing hostilities between the two networks as they work to preserve their valuable social graph information.
We reached out to Twitter and have confirmed that some desktop versions of the app will continue to be available. TweetDeck says that the Web and Chrome versions will get features first, followed by the Mac and PC apps.
Image Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.