Twitter has announced that it will shut down its official apps for Android TV, Xbox and Roku on May 24. The announcement comes three months after the micro-blogging platform brought the curtains down on its Mac app amidst reports of low user-engagement. The company now says that users will have to install its mobile apps (Android, iOS) or go over to its desktop site to get the ‘full Twitter experience’.
On Thursday, May 24, Twitter for Roku, Twitter for Android TV and Twitter for Xbox will no longer be available. To get the full Twitter experience, visit https://t.co/fuPJa3nVky on your device or desktop.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 22, 2018
While this will certainly be a blow for some users, the move isn’t a massive surprise, given that none of the Twitter TV apps were very popular in the first place. None of these apps let users tweet from them, and were largely meant for watching videos posted on Twitter. Users also couldn’t see their timeline from it, and didn’t even need to sign in to their account to use it.
Twitter only launched its TV apps in the last year and a half, with the Apple TV, Fire TV and Xbox One apps arriving in September 2016. The Android TV app arrived a couple of months later, in November. The Roku app, meanwhile, was made available only last year, which leads one to believe that the decision to pull shut down its TV apps is a relatively new one.
It’s worth noting here that the company recently pushed out a server-side update that cuts off many API features for third-party developers, preventing unofficial Twitter apps like Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Talon or Tweetings from accessing User and Site streams. With the Account Activity API, push notifications will no longer work and timelines won’t refresh automatically any more. The changes were originally slated to go into effect in June, but the company has postponed its release by three months.
