14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is moving to kill off some TweetDeck clients and some portions of the app, a slightly surprising move perhaps, since a couple of weeks ago it made an important update to the Chrome and web app.
But that actually explains it, Twitter will be focusing on the web version of TweetDeck and only the web version of TweetDeck, packaged for the web, for Chrome and as part of the PC and Mac desktop apps.
TweetDeck AIR, the desktop version, along with the TweetDeck mobile apps will be killed off. The apps won't be available for download from May and will also stop working, so you won't be able to stick with what you've got now either.
Twitter is also dropping support for Facebook inside the TweetDeck client; moving forward, only Twitter will be supported by the app.
"Over the past 18 months, we’ve been focused on building a fast and feature-rich web application for modern browsers, and a Chrome app, which offers some unique features like notifications," Twitter explains.
Despite killing off all of the apps and support for Facebook, Twitter boasts that TweetDeck is still very important to the company.
In fact, it says its TweetDeck team has doubled in the past six months and it's still adding people. But the full focus will be on the web app.
"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 added.
However, the company does realize that the move will affect some people who will not be satisfied with the web version, especially if they were using the mobile clients. Twitter apologizes for that, but that's all you'll get, an apology.
It does seem though that Twitter has no plans to kill off TweetDeck altogether, it makes sense too. While it may want most of the people using the official site and apps, it does realize that there are power users who will not be satisfied with it.