RIP: Twitter is closing the doors on Periscope

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For the seven or eight of you who still use Periscope, you’ll be sad to hear that Twitter will put the app to sleep in March 2021.

The live video service, which Twitter launched in March 2015, has been falling in popularity, to the point where it has become an unsustainable burden on Twitter’s bank account.

It is really nice of Twitter to wait until Periscope staff can celebrate the platform’s sixth anniversary, to then bring in the ultimate demise of the live video streaming app. Cool move, guys!

Periscope confirms closure of its app

In a post on its Medium account, Periscope has confirmed that, as of March 2021, the app will be no more. It says:

The truth is that the Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while.

Periscope confirms that those with existing Periscope accounts can download their archive of video content from the platform. You can still access any broadcast that you sent to Twitter as a replay.

Effective immediately, you won’t be able to create a new Periscope profile.

What is Periscope, again?

To briefly explain, Periscope is an app for Android and iOS that allows its users to stream live video from their smartphone or tablet. Users can follow each other and watch each other’s videos.

It also allowed you to share your broadcasts directly to Twitter, so then your Twitter followers could enter the lens of the Periscope, too.

Twitter acquired the app and the brand before it released Periscope in 2015. With Twitter allegedly paying up somewhere between $50-100 million, I do wonder how Periscope’s original devs feel about the death of “their” app.

Is there a new alternative to Periscope?

Hmmm, not really. Twitter is just going to integrate the service’s features into its own live video platform and through Fleets. Hence why you’ll be able to relive your Periscope-to-Twitter broadcasts as replays on Twitter itself.

Really, though, there are plenty of alternatives, such as Vimeo and Twitch. Just don’t get involved in Instagram videos unless you want Facebook spies looking at your ass in the shower.

What do you think? Surprised that Twitter is putting an end to the service? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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