I wouldn't be surprised if they acquired Tweetdeck with the view to staff up a London office and close out Ubermedia, and in the process mothballed Tweetdeck itself.
If this should happen, it feels like it'd be a desperate move. TweetDeck goes completely against the aesthetics and principals Twitter uses in it's various clients, so I assume it'd be purely for the users.
TweetDeck is the one twitter client (at least, that I know of) that makes Twitter useful. The ability to have numerous columns all live updating lets you really see current trends across just about anything you want in the twittersphere. It took TweetDeck for me to finally see why Twitter was useful. I wonder if that angle has anything to do with all of this.
>> TweetDeck goes completely against the aesthetics and principals Twitter uses in it's various clients
My thoughts exactly. I've never understood why TweetDeck was so popular, as the UX is horrible. It's a clumsy non-native app that lacks the polish of Twitter's other clients. I've tried it several times, but I can't bear to use it for more than five minutes.
Ultimately I don't see what Twitter would gain from this.
I wonder if this is a talent acquisition, a product acquisition, or a user acquisition (to prevent creation of an alternate service, either by TweetDeck or Ubermedia as ashbrahma suggested[1].
To me this is probably for the following reasons:
1. Talent acquisition (15 employees)
2. Build this up into a pro premium set of tools
3. Much less than $50m frankly I think tweet deck can't be generating more than $2-3m in revenue. I'd bet 15-20m is the price.
Because less competition or means someone else will buy them? If tweet deck gets acquired it wouldn't surprise me to see hoot suite in talks with ubermedia
tweetdeck kicks ass, it's the only twitter client i use except ubertwitter. but it needs an API badly...(the amazing things I would do!) I hope this acquisition goes through.
their UI is really good i don't want to have to spend the time to reinvent the wheel I just want to add some special search filters that require scripting
I don't think twitter can threaten, directly or indirectly, to cripple tweetdeck in any way if the sale doesn't go through or if they sell to another party.
I'm always suspicious when I see 'in talks' sort of articles because no acquisition discussion I've ever heard of ever had a 'feel free to share this with the press' clause, and there is a real chance that by having actual talks become public, they will fail.
So one wonders, is Tweetdeck leaking this to see if someone else might come to the table? Twitter to see if the market thinks its a stupid idea? Some disgruntled employee/founder who doesn't want the deal to go through? Like I said, I get suspicious.
I saw a lot of these leaks behind the scenes, and received a few myself, and 90% of the time it is either lawyers or investors who leak the information
It's the employee base twitter seems to be interested in. It cannot go with tweetdeck UI given it has already finalized on how it wants people to see twitter (with tweetie acquisition).
Another reason can be deck.ly. That is something which twitter does not have at this point.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 91.2 ms ] threadhttp://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/ubermedia-tweetdeck/
EDIT: Thanks for the info/links. This report certainly makes a lot more sense given that the Uber Media deal never actually closed.
I wouldn't be surprised if they acquired Tweetdeck with the view to staff up a London office and close out Ubermedia, and in the process mothballed Tweetdeck itself.
My thoughts exactly. I've never understood why TweetDeck was so popular, as the UX is horrible. It's a clumsy non-native app that lacks the polish of Twitter's other clients. I've tried it several times, but I can't bear to use it for more than five minutes.
Ultimately I don't see what Twitter would gain from this.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2460541
That said, I find it hard to believe TweetDeck is worth anywhere near $50million. Based on what revenues and how?
http://www.methylblue.com/
"That's a really nice Twitter client you've got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it..."
I don't think twitter can threaten, directly or indirectly, to cripple tweetdeck in any way if the sale doesn't go through or if they sell to another party.
So one wonders, is Tweetdeck leaking this to see if someone else might come to the table? Twitter to see if the market thinks its a stupid idea? Some disgruntled employee/founder who doesn't want the deal to go through? Like I said, I get suspicious.
Another reason can be deck.ly. That is something which twitter does not have at this point.