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Twitter Is Killing Several of Its TV Apps, Too (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the change-of-plan dept.

Twitter is shutting down its TV apps on Roku, Android TV and Xbox starting on May 24, the company announced this morning. From a report: The news of the apps' closure comes at a time when Twitter is now trying to steer its users to its first-party mobile apps and its desktop website by killing off apps used by a minority of its user base -- like the Twitter for Mac app it shut down earlier this year. And more recently, it has attempted to kill off popular third-party Mac apps with a series of unfriendly API changes.

It's unclear why this has become Twitter's agenda. While it can be a burden for a company to support a broader ecosystem of apps where some only have a niche audience, in some cases those "niche" users are also the most influential and heavy users. And arguably, anyone launching Twitter's app on their TV must be a die-hard user -- because who is really watching that much Twitter on their TV?

29 comments

  1. Twitter no longer apping apps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Twitter to become a LUDDITE company as it no longer supports app appers and become a website for LUDDITES

    1. Re:Twitter no longer apping apps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please throw yourself into a wood chipper. Thank you.

    2. Re:Twitter no longer apping apps by laurencetux · · Score: 1

      hey now why would you want him to damage a woodchipper like that??

  2. Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I have far more important things to do than concern myself with what you peons do on Twitter and Facebook. Let's have some real news for once, not just crap about Twitter that appeals to millennial simpletons.

    - gweihir

    1. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Youâ(TM)ve shown me I donâ(TM)t need to read the mess that is twitter because all the salt is right here in your comment!

  3. It will be even better... by Mnemennth · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...when everything Twitter is finally killed off. They are a cancer on the global subconsciousness.

    mnem
    Modding me down won't make this any less true.

    1. Re:It will be even better... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How will Trump tweet if Twitter is killed off? Not happening.

  4. Twitter + WebTV by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 0

    Blocking Twitter on WebTVs? You mean -- they're trying to finally block Trump?

    1. Re:Twitter + WebTV by RickyShade · · Score: 1

      ... but they know he uses an iPhone.

  5. Realistically can't leave Twitter but... by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I still will probably use Twitter from time to time, but I have to say there has never been a better time for some kind of Twitter alternative to come along... seriously thinking of moving to the Mastodon project regardless of no-one else on earth being there. It's not like I cared if people what I thought anyway... :-)

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Realistically can't leave Twitter but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not like I cared if people what I thought anyway... :-)

      Clearly.

    2. Re:Realistically can't leave Twitter but... by lgw · · Score: 3, Informative

      Check out minds.com. It's trying to be the uncensored, open source, decentralized Twitter. No clue if it actually is any of those things, but it would be nice.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:Realistically can't leave Twitter but... by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      Thanks, that looks pretty interesting, better than Mastodon. Will probably give that a shot.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    4. Re:Realistically can't leave Twitter but... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1, Troll

      seriously thinking of moving to the Mastodon project [joinmastodon.org] regardless of no-one else on earth being there.

      A place where there's no one but you might be the ideal place for you.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:Realistically can't leave Twitter but... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Check out minds.com.

      The tag line on the minds.com website is, "Get paid in crypto for your contributions to the community.".

      I'm thinking, nah.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  6. some really broad assumptions there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "While it can be a burden for a company to support a broader ecosystem of apps where some only have a niche audience, in some cases those "niche" users are also the most influential and heavy users. And arguably, anyone launching Twitter's app on their TV must be a die-hard user -- because who is really watching that much Twitter on their TV?"

    Except that i think that someone who is really that "influential" on twitter already has the app on a mobile device as well as has that device nearby. This article is BS, its just twitter cleaning house and not supporting development costs that are not creating a return and given that twitter can amalgamate all of the statistics of who uses which clients and which of those people is actually influential to the network thus putting a return value on that person/app's value. It is not hard to come up with some sort of evaluation that determines if the costs are worth the returns.

  7. the answer is obvious by desdinova+216 · · Score: 2

    many of the other apps don't show ads? I'm surprised the desktop site doesn't block you if you're running adblockers (great, I'm probably going summon APK

  8. But on second thought... by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Informative

    It seems like the Mastondon.technology group (which is where I'd want to move to) are a bunch of censorship nazis who block anyone that doesn't adhere to a rigid speech code, who wants to deal with that nonsense?

    Blocking such scary content providers as "libertarianism.club" and "toot.love". Funny how they only seem to block love, not hate...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:But on second thought... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Different instances (sites) have different policies; and then there's Pleroma, which is basically compatible with Mastodon so a site running one can talk to a site running the other.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

      The problem is less that some instances are blocklist-crazy (it's federated! Your instance, your rules!), more that (1) the blocklist-crazy ones don't always publish their policies, (2) there's one popular blocklist getting copied around blindly by admins who should know better, and (3) you end up with either multiple accounts or a restricted choice of instances because e.g. you want to talk to people on scholar.social, but scholar.social blocks/silences unmoderated instances, so you want an instance that not only doesn't block but probably won't get itself arbitrarily blocked, and so on...

  9. but but but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    how are we gonna #whacktonya while watching #dwts without the app on the tv? use a phone? that's #solastyear

  10. Twitter is killing them? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    MURDERERS! Oh, wait, shutting down? You wrote they were killing them, you lying bastards. *sigh*

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  11. Answering your own question by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

    And arguably, anyone launching Twitter's app on their TV must be a die-hard user -- because who is really watching that much Twitter on their TV?

    No one. That's why they are shutting it down. The amount of users utilizing the TV app is probably too low to justify the expense of maintaining it.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  12. Not the first time. by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

    A long time ago, I programmed an application that relied on the Twitter API. For a long time, the Twitter API was a reliable way of building an application that utilized Twitter. I'd even argue that this contributed to Twitter's growth: People could third party applications with great new features to interact with Twitter instead of just the official application.

    All was good for awhile, but then Twitter not only changed the API (which is to be expected from time to time) but radically reduced the amount of calls a developer could make to the API - with exceptions for the existing big API users. Essentially, they were locking the big players in (while limiting how much more they could grow) and ensuring that no other Twitter API-based application rose to prominence. Instead, they wanted people to just use the official Twitter applications. While I could understand why they made this move (steering people to Twitter's official applications increases chances to show those people ads and make money off of them), it severely damaged the third party ecosystem that grew around Twitter. They've done a few more of these API changes to all but kill off any non-official Twitter app.

    I've since ditched that Twitter application. It's a shame because I thought it had potential to be helpful to people, but I couldn't invest time and money into an application that could be killed off by one more Twitter press release.

    The basic lesson to be learned here is: Your application isn't truly yours if it relies on an API for a service that you don't control.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    1. Re:Not the first time. by Hadlock · · Score: 1

      The lack of twitter-capable tools is the #1 reason why I don't use the service. At best the main twitter app is a sidecar to the facebook constellation of apps. The only reason I use twitter is to complain to companies about poor service. Since Twitter doesn't integrate with anything, I never login to check anything. Since I use the app perhaps once a month at best I bet they still count me as an "engaged user".

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    2. Re:Not the first time. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Listen here you smug son of a bitch, you are disingenuous at best and a fraud at worst. You conveniently left off key points and time frames in order to narrate the story in your direction of which that is "grab your pitchforks we're burning down Twitter!". But you sir are wrong. You sir are ignoring the fact that Twitter emerged as a profitable company. Keyword here is profitable.

      Your application with free Twitter API's were available since Twitter launched. Yes, you got free access to their SDK in order to help build the platform. In return you were allowed to build applications just as you did. Twitter then said hey we need to make money and before limiting everyone's access, communicated with everyone that you will need to pay per volume and provided rates so you could prepare for the sticker shock. It forced app developers to streamline their requests and some developers even made it possible to keep operating within the confines of the limited free API. That said, the big API users you reference was anyone who wished to retrieve more than 50,000 tweets at one time. The more you pay, the more time-relevant tweets you are shown. Your application was not worth the more expensive tiers as evident by your whining about the radical reduction.

      As an anecdotal story to yours, during the same time the tiered structure came in to play I was making a social analyzer. I was able to use the free developer tier to tweak and hone the strategy of my application before spending 0.7% of my revenue to pay for that "special exception for the existing big API users". My application went on to generate a total revenue of $19 million. Total spent on twitter's API (over the course of ~18months): $130k or about $7k/month.

      but I couldn't invest time and money into an application that could be killed off by one more Twitter press release.

      really translates to

      but my application was not interesting enough for anyone, including myself, to invest in now that twitter is charging for their platform. therefore, the logical conclusion is twitter's PR department is the source of all evil and prevents hard working developers like myself from earning a decent dollar developing on their platform

      I mean do you even read the text that spews from under your fingers after you click Enter?

  13. There was a Roku app? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is the first I heard of it.

  14. It was overkill. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a Samsung refrigerator, that had a twitter app on it, totally useless.

    1. Re:It was overkill. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      I have a Samsung refrigerator, that had a twitter app on it, totally useless.

      Plus, it kept spamming everyone that your milk had gone bad.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  15. Huh? by Alypius · · Score: 1

    ...causing millions of readers to immediately ask, "Twitter has a tv app?"