Here's a quick, and somewhat confusing, one.

Back in June, Twitter released a new app called Dashboard which is designed to help businesses make the most of their Twitter presence without having to refer to third-party options.

It's a pretty handy app - through Dashboard you can track key terms, create and schedule tweets and access in-depth analytics, making it easier to use Twitter for monitoring and response purposes, activities many conduct via third party platforms.

But handy as it may be, it clearly hasn't seen significant take-up - today, via the official Twitter Dashboard handle, they've announced that the app will be shutdown on February 3rd.

Twitter Dashboard will be closing down on February 3rd. 1/5 - Twitter Dashboard (@dashboardapp) January 10, 2017

It's an odd move, particularly considering the questions about product direction at Twitter - shutting down an app six months after introducing it does little to alleviate concerns in this regard.

In a series of tweets, the Dashboard team has explained that they're looking to bring the best features from Dashboard 'to the broader Twitter community' - which probably means through TweetDeck which has received several upgrades in recent times. In hindsight, it may have been better for Twitter to focus more attention on TweetDeck more specifically, as almost all of the Dashboard functions are already available there, but they must have seen a need for a specific app, with better mobile functionality likely a key focus.

What'll be of interest now will be what Twitter does with some of the tools that were controlled through Dashboard.

In September, Twitter introduced a new range of tools which enable brands to activate new customer support display options, including a specific 'Provides Support' badge and responsive indicator.

Those tools are activated via Dashboard exclusively, so they'll need to add a new option to control these tools elsewhere - again, likely in TweetDeck. (UPDATE (2/3): These tools are now available via a new business page)

For users that have enjoyed having a more focused, mobile-friendly app, Twitter still has Engage, also introduced last June, which provides some of the functions, including a filterable feed and in-stream analytics.