If you plan on logging any of your old Periscope or Twitter live recordings, then you best download them now, because Twitter is planning to also scrap its live archive, as part of its broader cost-cutting efforts. What else has Twitter tried to get rid of? Soon enough, you’ll probably start hearing that Twitter is also auctioning off its logo to help mitigate branding costs. Anyway, according to a notification shared by Katie Notopolous, Twitter will supposedly remove its live video recording option ‘soon’, so it’s best to download them now and save them elsewhere.
Un-Live Tweets
There’s no mention of audio recordings of live Spaces just yet, but Spaces is built on the back-end infrastructure that once supported Periscope, so it does make sense if they might also be in jeopardy. On both fronts, it’d be best to download any recording you’d want to keep.
Twitter has allowed users to save their live broadcasts since 2016, back when Periscope was the only live-streaming option attached to the app. Periscope rode the live-streaming trend train, which was initially led by Meerkat, eventually becoming the main destination for live video. Interest then subsequently faded before the main Periscope app was scuttled in 2021. By then, Twitter had directly integrated live streaming, enabling users to share and save their broadcasts within Tweets.
Now, that option is being removed entirely, likely as a part of a renegotiated deal with Amazon Web Services, as Twitter continues to cut costs where it can. Despite all that it has done so far on this front, it seems that Twitter is still bleeding cash, instead of making it. Reports say that it’ll be lucky to just break even this year. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that total Twitter revenue us down by 40% YoY, with a majority of the app’s advertisers ceasing their spending in the wake of Musk’s takeover.
Estimates suggest that Twitter might still be operating at a loss, despite all of Musk’s broad-scale cost reduction efforts. While it’s likely no longer losing $4 million a day, it’s clearly also not making any in return, with newer revenue drivers like Twitter Blue still failing to hit the mark.
In some ways, many of the changes Musk made were inevitable – as noted, Twitter was supposedly losing $4 million a day. At the same time, however, Musk also loosened the rules around free speech, while also reinstating some previously banned accounts. Musk also occasionally brings up conspiracy theories and shares questionable content himself, doing little to reassure advertisers that Twitter remains a safe place for their promotions.
This puts Musk in a difficult position. Should he move more in line with previous Twitter management, and provide more moderation and safety controls to maximize appeal to ad partners, or should he stick to what he’s doing now? The latter is where things seem to be headed right now.
The Wrap
Musk hopes that Twitter will eventually attract over a billion users, and at that rate, advertisers will just come itching back, as the potential reach is just too great to ignore. What’s unclear is how this is going to happen. There might be more going on in the background that we don’t see, but it remains a big challenge, that will take some amazing shifts to pull off. Can Musk really do it? Well, if he does, then he might just be a true genius.
Sources