Britain’s TweetDeck Poised For US Takeover

The most popular Twitter client, TweetDeck, is getting prepared for a £19m acquisition deal by US company UberMedia, according to reports.

The negotiation between East London startup TweetDeck and California-based UberMedia is being finalised and should be completed within the next month, according to the Financial Times. It is expected that TweetDeck will be offered both cash and shares in the US firm, which has already gobbled up several Twitter-based client products for iPhone and BlackBerry smartphones, including UberTwitter and EchoFon.

TweetDeck Deal Fuels East London Tech City

The negotiation is also seen as a potential stimulant for the government’s “East London Tech City” scheme.  Last year, PM David Cameron expressed his ambition to turn the Olympics site into a new hub of creative technology and design after 2012 to attract high-tech visionaries and entrepreneurs.

“Our ambition is to bring together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic Park to help make east London one of the world’s great technology centres,” said the prime minister.

So far, Intel, Google and Facebook have all committed to opening research labs or innovation centres in the newly redeveloped area.

TweetDeck attracts millions of users

Launched in July 2008, TweetDeck is a third-party Twitter client which can be downloaded for free to desktop, smartphones and tablets.

It allows users to update and maintain social networking accounts like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Buzz.

Last year, the company claimed its free desktop application had been downloaded over 15 million times in two years after launch, making the software five times more popular than any other products based around Twitter.