Twitter In Talks To Buy Tweetdeck

Twitter is reportedly engaged in “advanced talks” to acquire the popular Twitter client, Tweetdeck, for approximately $50 million (£35 million).

This is according to a report on the Wall Street Journal, which cited ‘people familiar with the matter’ as its source. For its part however, the micro-blogging site is remaining tip lipped over the matter.

The WSJ report comes after another acquisition rumour about Tweetdeck earlier this year. In February the Financial Times reported that TweetDeck was preparing for a £19m acquisition deal by California-based app developer UberMedia.

Popular Client

Meanwhile speculation has begun as for the possible reasons that Twitter would like to acquire Tweetdeck.

Launched in July 2008 as a startup based in East London, 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 UK-based company claimed its free desktop application had been downloaded over 15 million times in the two years since its launch, making the software five times more popular than any other products based around Twitter.

Tweetdeck reportedly has a 13 percent market share of tweets.

What makes Tweetdeck interesting however is the fact that it allows users to browse using a column-based interface, which means that users can filter who they follow into different categories. Users can also manage multiple accounts and search terms far more easily than via twitter.com.

Acquisition Reasons

This has triggered speculation that Twitter is making a purely defensive move and is looking to effectively kill off a rival desktop client.

This argument has support, espically after Tweetdeck recently launched TweetDeck Web Beta, a web-based version that is similar to Twitter, in that it will be available on all browsers eventually (Chome only) at the moment. This means it doesn’t require a download.

Other speculation hints that Twitter may be considering making Tweetdeck its official desktop app.

Twitter has previously form here. In April 2010 it acquired Tweetie, which was then the leading iPhone application. Twitter subsequently renamed it ‘Twitter for iPhone’ and offered it free of charge.

It should be noted finally that this is not the only rumour the WSJ has made about Twitter.

Back in February, Twitter’s CEO, Dick Costolo, sought to end speculation that his company was an acquisition target for Google or Facebook.

This followed the WSJ rekindling the rumour when it said Google and Facebook held low-level talks with Twitter about buying the company for $8 billion (£4.9 billion) to $10 billion (£6.2 billion).