Twitter Gets Rid of its TweetDeck

If you are a heavy Twitter user, you may be disappointed by Twitter’s announcement that they will be shutting down multiple TweetDeck apps.  If you aren’t familiar with the app, TweetDeck is a Twitter tool that tracks real-time conversations, across multiple accounts and topics. It’s official that TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for iPhone and TweetDeck for Android will soon stop working.  They will be removed from app stores in May.  Twitter has decided to focus on the web-based version instead of the apps. Twitter has indicated that they have been working for the past 18 months on upgrading their web application for modern browsers, as well as a Chrome app.  The upgrades include a new look, better search filters, and automatically-updating Tweet streams.

Twitter indicates that they made the decision to discontinue the apps based upon user preferences.  They noted in a TweetDeck blog post that “discontinuing our app support is a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going.”  They go on to state that the recent trend has been towards people using Twitter on their mobile devices and TweetDeck on their computers.  They also noted that they have recently upgraded Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, including adding photo filters, enhancing search functions, and upgrading user profiles.

The removal of the TweetDeck apps isn’t the only change.   Facebook integration is going to be removed as well.  The destruction of Facebook integration appears to be the latest in the war between social media giants Facebook and Twitter.  Twitter also warns users that prior to the apps being officially shut down in May, there could be outages for users that continue to use the apps up until that time, due to occasional system tests. While they made a good case for all of the changes, Twitter also apologized to users who would be affected by the shift.

[Images via sfgate & androidguys]