If you’re one of those people who enjoy using Twitter on their TV, you’re in for some bad news. Twitter today announced that it will discontinue its apps on the Xbox One, Roku, and Android TV. The apps will no longer be available beginning this Thursday, May 24.
The report was first sighted on twitter support page, after a tweet on the cancellation of their app on listed device. The tweet which reads:
“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://twitter.com on your device or desktop.
The Android TV app was published in late 2016, and it allowed users to watch Twitter live streams (football, coverage of political events, etc) and view Moments. It was last updated in December 2017 and currently sits at 10,000-100,000 installations, so it’s not surprising why Twitter would decide to end development. The Roku and Xbox apps offered similar functionality.
The Twitter Roku app was one of the later TV apps to arrive, launching just a year ago, following the September 2016 launch of the Apple TV, Fire TV and Xbox One apps. At the time, the company touted the app as a way for people to “…watch live events and see what people are talking about, keeping them connected to what’s happening.”
The move by the company isn’t a huge surprise; Twitter hasn’t always been super supportive of third-party apps. As recently the company made changes to the Account Activity API that could stop push notifications and timelines from working as they currently do. If you really need to tweet from your television, there’s still the Apple TV Twitter app, although its existence isn’t guaranteed on how long it will be supported.
Let’s look at the brighter side, the action taken by the company is almost definitely for the best as Twitter is killing off these apps, as it’s long overdue. This will sure allow the company place its focus on more important things, like trying to continue turning a profit.
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