Twitter kills off TweetDeck for mobile, keeps support for Mac and PC versions

Microblogging giant Twitter announced on Monday that it is discontinuing support for iOS and Android iterations of TweetDeck, as well as TweetDeck AIR and integration with Facebook, in an attempt to focus efforts on web-based versions of the product.

The real-time conversation tracking tool, acquired by Twitter in 2011 for $40 million, will be removed from the iOS and Android Play app stores in May, with service for the platforms to cease soon after. Also reaching its end of life is TweetDeck AIR, the Adobe-based version of the tool.

From TweetDeck's announcement:

To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, weâ€™re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. Weâ€™ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.

Of note is the stoppage of integration with Facebook, highlighting the ongoing rivalry between the two companies which recently saw the Facebook-owned Instagram pull inline preview capabilities from Twitter.

Leading up to the apps' deprecation, users may experience outages as Twitter performs tests associated with its upcoming API version change from v1.0 to v1.1.

TweetDeck notified The Next Web that desktop versions of the tool will continue to be available to users, including those for the Mac and PC.