Los Angeles — After months of rumors and speculation, and what many had already concluded: Twitter has finally announced that it has finalized a US$40 million deal to buy popular third-party client TweetDeck, according to a CNN report.
While at last breaking the ice, Twitter and TweetDeck are yet to confirm the acquisition, which was first reported by TechCrunch this month, while Twitter’s global PR account still says “we continue to not comment on rumors.”
However, in a blog post confirming the acquisition, acknowledgements made by the companies’ executives indicate Twitter plans to use TweetDeck to cater to power tweeters — users who constantly monitor their feeds and contribute a great deal of the network’s actual content. The advertising potential among those users could be particularly attractive.
According to TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth, affirming the acquisition on the TweetDeck blog, and appears to describe in detail more about how his creation will fit in to the Twitter product lineup:
“The mainstream Twitter user-base is well catered for by twitter.com and the official mobile clients. And by becoming part of the official platform, TweetDeck will now fill that role for brands, influencers, the highly active and anyone that just needs ‘more power’.”
“This acquisition holds an important step forward for us,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wrote in a blog post. “TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about.”
Apparently to repudiate speculation that Twitter would kill TweetDeck if it acquired the third-party developer, Costolo also wrote, “In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love.”
The terms of the deal were undisclosed but various news reports put it between US$40 million and $50 million. But for now, it is unclear how TweetDeck will be integrated into the Twitter ecosystem.
“Change may well be inevitable, but we remain the same team, staying in London, with the same focus and products, and now with the support and resources to allow us to grow and take on even bigger challenges,” Dodsworth added.
TweetDeck is the tool of choice for power users because of its multiple timeline capabilities.
Surprisingly, TweetDeck is one of the most celebrated third-party Twitter clients and the tool of choice for power users because of its multiple timeline capabilities. But in a struggle for consistency, Twitter has been aggressively expanding its offering of native clients across various operating system, and snubbed the idea of third-party clients.
The rumors that Twitter would buy TweetDeck picked up in April, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter was in “advance talks” to snap up TweetDeck for about $50 million. This started a so-called bidding war between Twitter and UberMedia, which has three popular third-party mobile clients. Then, earlier this month, TechCrunch chimed in to say that a deal worth $40-$50 million was already complete. On Monday, CNN corroborated the earlier reports, claiming quite definitively that the deal had been finalized.
The acquisition is perhaps the most powerful and expensive example of Twitter’s drive to impose iron-fisted control over third party apps. Of perhaps greater interest, at least to its users, are Twitter’s plans for Tweetdeck.
Interestingly, the 15-person TweetDeck team will be stationed in its Old Street HQ in London, and will keep on to develop the software that has so far been downloaded by 20 million users.