Twitter announced that it would phase out Periscope, the live-streaming video app it bought more than five years ago, by March 2021, Report informs.
Twitter bought the startup behind Periscope in January 2015 in a deal reportedly worth up to $100 million, betting that personal video live-streaming would complement its leading social service.
According to Twitter, Periscope has seen declining usage over the past several years — and that, essentially, the cost to maintain it outweighs its value. "The truth is that the Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while," the company wrote in a blog post.
Meanwhile, most of Periscope's core capabilities are already integrated into Twitter, which the company first introduced in the fall of 2016. Users can broadcast on Twitter using the Twitter Live feature within composing by selecting the in-app camera icon. Besides, brands, publishers, and creators can broadcast live videos on Twitter by using Media Studio.
"We probably would have made this decision sooner if it weren't for all of the projects we reprioritized due to the events of 2020," Twitter said.