Twitter kills Android, iPhone and AIR desktop apps for TweetDeck
Personal browser apps will go dead after May so TweetDeck team can focus on Web-based versions instead.
Twitter is shutting down the TweetDeck apps for Android and iPhone, as well as axing the Adobe AIR desktop version, the company announced today through the TweetDeck blog.
This means TweekDeck is taking the apps out of app stores in May and, shortly afterward, the apps will stop functioning altogether.
"Over the past few years, we've seen a steady trend toward people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices," according to the blog post. "This trend coincides with an increased investment in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android -- adding photo filters and other editing capabilities, revamping user profiles and enhancing search. 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."
Twitter acquired TweetDeck in 2011. The apps let you see your Facebook updates and tweets, but Twitter is terminating support for that function as well. As these TweetDeck apps get closer to their expiration date, users should expect some outages because these versions rely on Twitter's API, which the company is starting to retire this month.
Instead of improving on the TweetDeck apps in the past 18 months, TweetDeck said it has been focused on building applications for Web browsers and a Chrome app. The operation has doubled its team over the past six months to allow for weekly updates to its Web apps.