Twitter to discontinue, deactivate Tweetdeck

Twitter continues to herd users towards a web-only interface. In a blog post, the Tweetdeck team announced that Twitter (which owns the app), is discontinuing support for Tweetdeck AIR (the desktop version for OS X and Windows), Tweetdeck for iPhone, and Tweetdeck for Android, and will stop distributing them in “early May.”

“Well,” you may think, “I’ll just get the app now and continue using it.” Nope; the apps will “stop functioning shortly thereafter,” and be unable to access Twitter. Facebook support will likewise be discontinued.

The web version of Tweetdeck will continue to be developed for power users, continuing Twitter’s trend of favoring its own web interface and enacting stricter controls over third party apps. From the blog post:

In many ways, doubling down on the TweetDeck web experience and discontinuing our app support is a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady trend towards people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices.

Twitter has been making several changes, including stricter guidelines on how third-party apps can display information, as well as how many users they can support. Twitter (like Facebook and Google) makes money by tracking users’ information and selling it to advertisers, and these changes are likely a result of their desire to have greater access to this information without dealing with an external developer.