Twitter: Time to Say Goodbye to Periscope

Twitter says it has made the "difficult decision" to shut down Periscope, the livestreaming video app it snapped up for around $100 million before it launched in early 2015. The company announced in a blog post Tuesday that the service will be discontinued in March and new account signups will be blocked with the latest update, the Verge reports. "The truth is that the Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while," the company wrote. "Over the past couple of years, we've seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time."

Twitter, which launched "powered by Periscope" live video in its main app in late 2016, said most of Periscope's "core capabilities" have already been integrated into Twitter, reports Variety. "We probably would have made this decision sooner if it weren’t for all of the projects we reprioritized due to the events of 2020," the blog post said. "Although it’s time to say goodbye, the legacy of Periscope will live on far beyond the boundaries of the app itself." (In the early days of Periscope, users livestreamed their fridges.)