In a surprise move, Twitter has shut down the mobile apps of its TweetDeck social media management tool, in a bid to focus on its web versions.
The move goes against the grain of many of its rivals, such as Facebook, which is starting to focus on mobile over web applications. But it also suggests Twitter is looking to scale down TweetDeck’s mobile functions in favour of its own native apps.
Announcing the news on the TweetDeck blog, the Twitter said it will “focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck” and the Chrome browser app.
“Over the next two months users of TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone may experience some outages with those apps before they are removed from their respective app stores in early May,” warns the blog.
The firm said Facebook integration will also be discontinued. It also warned that continuing to use the apps until then could be problematic — they rely on an older version of its API which it will be conducting tests on in the future, which could lead to outages for users.
It seems that the decision to retire some of the versions of TweetDeck was strengthened by the extensive work on Twitter’s mobile apps, which have made it easier for power users to manage multiple accounts on the go without the dedicated TweetDeck app.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady trend towards people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices,” said TweetDeck. “That said, we know this applies to most of our users –– not all of them. And for those of you who are inconvenienced by this shift, our sincere apologies.”
TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter in May 2011, but in recent months, the social media app TweetDeck has been sent a letter from the UK companies registrar, warning that the company will be struck off in three months and forcibly dissolved unless it files accounts.
Twitter now owns the intellectual property of TweetDeck and employs the staff who had been working on the product.
The letter stated: “The Registrar of Companies gives notice that, unless cause is shown to the contrary, at the expiration of 3 months from the above date the name of TweetDeck Ltd will be struck off the register and the company will be dissolved.”
Read the full TweetDeck statement here
