Are we still even surprised when Twitter does something strange and inexplicable? Maybe it’s part of their continuing experiment into figuring out their place in this social media world, but apparently, the homescreen widget for Android devices is now gone, at least in the alpha version. Some users on that version have reported that they have lost the widget support, and even though there’s no word yet from Twitter, it may also extend to the beta and the stable version soon.
Twitter for Android has actually seen better times of late, with a Material Design overhaul, a possible night mode that is now in the testing phase, and a Direct Reply feature in the Android N developer preview. But it seems like they are planning to remove the homescreen widget, which some people find pretty useful (well those that use the native Twitter app, that is). Some of those who have the alpha version are encountering a message that “This widget is no longer supported by Twitter” and that they should instead use the main app itself.
Well, we understand that they would want to streamline all downloads to the app, but it’s not as if the widget is a third party service or something. So really, it’s confusing why they would do something like this. One possibility is that there were probably too few users to make it worth their while to keep it alive. But does it take that much effort to maintain a widget?
Let’s wait and see whether this change will carry over on to the beta and stable versions of the Twitter for Android app. But if they do remove it, here’s hoping the future updates will bring more useful features for those who are still heavy users of the micro-blogging service.
VIA: Android Police
I think I will be less likely to open Twitter now, probably good since I spend too much time on there.
Gone the same way as Facebook widget.
The reasoning I’d suggest is related to advertising.
It was always broken anyway. Show the same tweet for 2 days…
Gone on my stable version.
The irony is that although the widget has disappeared, look in the Android Marshmallow Widget option selection menu & guess what, the option to select both sizes of the non existent twitter widget still exists, naturally it does not work. Oh the joys of Android.