Twitter is shutting down Periscope as a service next year. The social media company said that it will discontinue all Periscope-related applications starting on March 2021.
The shutdown of the service will not end the company's live-video streaming on its own mobile application, the company said. Its Twitter Live feature will still be available on the main Twitter app.
"The Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while... Over the past couple of years, we've seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time," Twitter said.
Starting this week, new account signups on the live video streaming app will no longer be available. The option to do so will be removed on apps updated to the latest version, which Twitter rolled out today Wednesday.
Users will be given the chance to download all of their archived Periscope videos and other relevant data before the app is shut down next year. Twitter said that it will keep the Periscope website available but only as a "read-only archive."
"Super Broadcasters" on the app - users that monetize their videos from tips given to them by followers - will have until April 2021 to cash out.
Periscope was originally developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein for Android and iOS. Twitter bought the company before it was launched in 2015.
Periscope did manage to thrive during the heyday of live broadcasting along with other apps such as Meerkat. Despite Twitter's considerable social presence and resources, Periscope's popularity dwindled.
In 2016, Twitter decided to integrate most of Periscope's features into its main Twitter App. The feature - called Twitter Live - was described as being "powered by Periscope."
As more of Periscope's core capabilities made its way into the main Twitter app, users gradually lost interest in the smaller app.
Experts said that the shutdown of Periscope as a separate service should allow Twitter to better focus on further developing the live streaming functionality of its main app to compete with other social media services.
