It wouldn’t be a wrong to say that Twitter’s standalone live-streaming app, Periscope, has been struggling to maintain a user base over the last couple of years. Add the rise in operation costs and Twitter has decided to discontinue the app by March 2021.
According to the Periscope team, the app is currently in an “unsustainable maintenance-mode state”, where the decline in user base made it impossible to keep up with the rising costs of keeping the app running. In light of this decision, the teams at Periscope and Twitter have been working on bringing over many of the core functionalities to the Twitter itself, so that the user base has somewhere to shift to.
The app will be taken off from Android and iOS app stores in March 2021, and new in-app user account creation will be stopped starting the next update itself. Previous broadcasts will be saved as Replays on Twitter, and live-streamers can also be downloaded an archive of their Periscope streams if they wish to do so before March 2021. It will continue to offer live video streaming through Twitter Live feature in the Twitter app.