Last week, the blogosphere was on fire with reaction to a report by the Wall Street Journal that Twitter is in talks to buy TweetDeck for $50 Million (registration may be required to read the post). The news came as a bit of a surprise as TweetDeck was reported to have struck a deal with UberMedia to acquire the app for $30 Million back in February.
At the time, there was some confusion about the wisdom of the UberMedia deal. Twitter’s response to the announcement was to block UberMedia’s other recently acquired Twitter apps from accessing Twitter’s API. The move was widely viewed as both an overreaction and heavy-handed. Twitter’s justification was that the UberMedia apps had allegedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service and many TweetDeck users were afraid that TweetDeck was going to be shut down next.
While TweetDeck was not affected by the blockage, a Twitter acquisition could have huge implications for both Twitter’s and TweetDeck’s users. Twitter, which used to be hailed as an example of innovation, has recently been criticized by many “power-users” for its lack of innovation. In comparison to TweetDeck, or other services such as Hootsuite, twitter.com is embarrassingly low-frills and rarely introduces new features. (more…)
