Los Angeles — In a surprising turn of events, in order to put more talent on their platform team, micro-blogging outfit Twitter has made another acquisition to expand its app development capabilities, confirmed acqui-hiring the team from mobile app development startup Cabana.
The particulars behind the deal are still incognito, but visual drag-and-drop app creation tool Cabana has announced that it has been acquired by Twitter. Cabana promised to be an ‘app creation tool’ for designers, which allowed them to build apps with a simple visually oriented interface. However, the staff at Cabana, will be joining Twitter immediately while its app will be shut down on December 1.
The micro-blogging hub likely made the acquisition in part to bulk up its staff focused on that area as Cabana’s staff will be joining Twitter today. Cabana was launched back in February of 2011 at the Launch conference.
Cabana said in a blog post that it will be working with Twitter’s platform team “to build tools to help third-party developers create new experiences on Twitter and empower the larger Twitter ecosystem.”
Cabana makes technology to develop mobile apps. (Credit: Cabana)
Here is the full post from Cabana team about “Joining the Flock” in a blog post:
We built Cabana because we are passionate about empowering people to develop interactive content in new and innovative ways. That same passion for innovation and the democratization of content creation is also shared by the amazing team at Twitter.
Over the past few months, we’ve gotten to know the Twitter team and discovered the tremendous amount of technological synergy and alignment of our visions. The more we explored this synergy, the more excited we became about joining forces and working together.
Starting today we will be joining Twitter’s platform team, and will build tools to help third-party developers create new experiences on Twitter and empower the larger Twitter ecosystem.
Welcome to Twitter, @cabanaapp. cabanaapp.com/blog/cabana-is…
— Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) October 16, 2012
Before being bought by Twitter, Cabana was founded by Reeve Thompson and Jeremy Gordon, and its staff comes from visual companies like Sega, Pixar, LucasArts, Adobe, and EA. Cabana notes on its site that the team “draws from a past of deep technical wizardry and merges it with [an] innovative and effective design.” The site added that it takes a different approach to developing for the Web as it is used to working with GPUs and other graphic elements.
Cabana says that they have been ‘getting to know’ the Twitter team over the last few months and got excited about joining forces. The Cabana app will no longer be offered as a standalone tool. Cabana will be shutting down on December 1st 2012. If you have any questions about our rolldown, please email us at rolldown@cabanaapp.com.
We are excited for what the future with Twitter holds!
{iframe width=”620″ height=”390″ align=”top”}http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZYdzFrPaAPQ{/iframe}