Twitter code teardown hints that it may down Periscope in 2021

Twitter video-sharing app Periscope hasn’t been on the tip of anyone’s tongue recently – apart from in the context of phone cameras. With TikTok being the flavor of 2020, and Twitter’s focus on its disappearing Tweet service Fleets, it’s clear that time has moved on. Indeed, when Twitter decided to buy the site before it even launched in 2015, it was as a spoiler to a similar app, Meerkat, and when was the last time we heard about that? (Actually, it was this year, it’s now video-call service House Party).

As time, technology and zeitgeist move on, it’s quite common to see these “next great hope” apps fall by the wayside. Heck, that’s basically Google’s business model. So it’s not a huge surprise that we’re getting the first hints that Periscope is not long for this world. A developer by the name of Jane Machun Wong (@wongmjane) has been exploring a teardown of the latest Twitter app code and discovered an ominous thing.

Hidden in a currently orphaned line of code is a (dead) link under the string “ps_app_shutdown_learn_more_url”. It could be seen as something of a “smoking gun”, though we’ve got no further details, and nothing official from Twitter so far. That said, it does feel like Periscope has served its purpose. Twitter Live has been active in the main app since 2016, long enough that it has now seen itself used for its second US Presidential Election. Live streaming in Twitter is still referred to as being powered “by Periscope”, but these days, it is more of a nod to history than an active partnership.

Whatever happens now, it’ll seem like something of a hollow end to Periscope. Twitter killed off another acquisition, Vine, in order to focus on Periscope, a fact much maligned at the time. If Periscope is near the end too, it’ll mark a sad end to two projects that could, in the right hands, have given TikTok a run for its money.

The post Twitter code teardown hints that it may down Periscope in 2021 appeared first on xda-developers.

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