After refusing to confirm the deal rumoured over recent weeks, Twitter and TweetDeck have now announced the latter’s acquisition by the former.
Why? Twitter already has its own app which it is pushing hard, built out of its acquisition of Tweetie last year. So will TweetDeck similarly augment this main app? Apparently not.
In fact, both companies’ announcements suggest a bifurcation of Twitter’s “mainstream” and “power” audience, that Twitter wants to make TweetDeck a social media monitoring dashboard for marketers…
Here’s TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth’s explanation…
“The reason for (our) growth is simple – our unwavering focus on providing high-quality tools and services for the Twitter-centric power-user. This has always been our core audience – the most active, influential and valuable users of Twitter and social media in general. Quality over quantity.
“It is precisely for this reason that Twitter has acquired TweetDeck. 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”.
“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.”
And here is Twitter CEO Dick Costolo:
“This acquisition is an important step forward for us. TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about. In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love.”
Twitter is refusing to disclose deal terms, but CNN last reported the price to be about $40 million. TweetDeck had been backed by Betaworks, TAG, SV Angel and PROfounders.