Periscope Shut Down: Twitter Confirms End of Live Streaming App

In light of recent news, Periscope has declared today that it will cease functioning as an independent application by March 2021. The organization, which is owned by Twitter, described its present activities as “not viable” in a public statement released today. A reduction in user activity over the past several years was also identified as a key contributing reason.

The company stated, “Maintaining the application in its present condition would not be fair to the Periscope community, either those who currently use it or those who have used it in the past, nor would it be beneficial for Twitter.”

Twitter, having acquired the live streaming application in 2015, has been expanding its own video capabilities in recent months, making many of Periscope’s features unnecessary as a separate application. A piece of code discovered within the Twitter application last week suggested the eventual shutdown of Periscope. However, Twitter declined to provide a statement at that time.

Periscope was acquired during its early stages, as Twitter sought to counter the increasing popularity of a competing service, Meerkat. Naturally, the realm of live video has significantly advanced in recent years, ultimately leading to the logical decision to integrate these functionalities directly into the core Twitter application. Despite the overall growth of livestreaming, Periscope’s performance as an independent app has been declining for several years, as the company acknowledges.

The company further explains that this outcome was likely anticipated even earlier, but unforeseen circumstances delayed the decision. “We likely would have reached this conclusion sooner if not for the necessary adjustments we made to our priorities in response to the challenges of 2020,” Twitter clarified.

According to Sensor Tower, Periscope has accumulated approximately 101 million installations throughout its lifespan, encompassing both the App Store and Google Play. TechCrunch was also informed that “As of this year, Periscope has recorded roughly 6.8 million global installations, representing a 7% decrease compared to the approximately 7.3 million installations observed during the same timeframe from January to December 14, 2019.”

Periscope will be removed from app stores in March, and the option to register new accounts will be removed with the subsequent software release. Existing live streams that were shared on Twitter will remain accessible on that platform as recordings. The company is also providing users with the opportunity to download an archive of their content before it is permanently removed in March.