Twitter is Removing is Archive of Recorded Live-Streams

If you wanna’ keep any of your old Periscope of Twitter Live recordings, you better download them soon, because Twitter’s going to remove its live archive, as it continues to seek more ways to cut costs.

As you can see in this notification, shared by Katie Notopolous, Twitter says that it will be removing its live video archive ‘soon’, so you’ll need to download and save them elsewhere if you want to keep them.

There’s no mention of audio recordings of live Spaces as yet, but Spaces is built on the back-end infrastructure that once supported Periscope, so it stands to reason that they may also be in jeopardy.

On both fronts, I’d be downloading and recordings you want to keep, as Twitter reviews its storage costs, and looks for more ways to cut down on capacity.

Twitter has enabled users to save their live broadcasts since 2016, when Periscope was the only live-streaming option attached to the app. Periscope rode the live-streaming fad, initially led by Meerkat, to become the main destination for live video, before interest in the functionality faded, and the separate Periscope app was eventually shut down in 2021. By then, however, live streaming had been incorporated into Twitter direct, enabling users to both stream and save their broadcasts within their tweets.

But now, that option is being removed, likely as part of a renegotiated deal with AWS, as Twitter looks for any way to cut costs that it can find.

Because despite massive staff cuts, office closures and garage sales, Twitter is still not on a path to making money, with new reports suggesting the company will be lucky to break even in 2023.

Late last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter revenue is down 40% year-over-year, with the majority of the app’s top advertisers ceasing their spending in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover at the app.

Based on estimates, that suggests that Twitter may still be operating at a loss, despite Musk’s broad-scale cost reduction push. It’s likely no longer losing $4 million per day, as Elon claims it was when he took over at the app, but it’s also likely still not in the black, with newer revenue drivers like Twitter Blue failing to become significant contributors to the bottom line as yet.   

That’s why Twitter is still cutting staff, and working to renegotiate deals, while it’s also restricting SMS 2FA to reduce telecommunications charges, and implementing fees for API usage.

In some ways, many of these changes were inevitable – as noted, Twitter was losing $4 million per day under the previous management. But at the same time, Musk’s push to loosen the rules around free speech, while also allowing previously banned users back in the app, and sharing conspiracy theories and questionable content himself, has done nothing to reassure advertisers of a safe environment for their promotions.

Which puts Elon in a difficult position. Should he move more into line with previous Twitter management, and provide more moderation and safety controls to maximize appeal to ad partners, or should he stick to his guns, and make a bigger push on Twitter Blue and other monetization elements, which would also enable him to continue his free speech push?

It seems that the latter is the way things are headed, but whether that will even be enough to offset the advertising losses remains to be seen.

Musk’s hope is that, eventually, Twitter will attract over a billion users, and at that rate, advertisers will simply have to come back, as the potential reach will be too great to ignore. But how exactly that’s going to happen is unclear. There may be more to the grand scheme that we’re not seeing, but it remains a big challenge, which will take some amazing shifts to pull off.

Maybe he can do it. Many have noted what he’s been able to achieve in other industries and areas that were previously considered impossible to solve, and maybe, then, Twitter is right up his alley.

If he can, he’ll certainly prove his genius, and his capacity to envision things that others simply don’t see.