Twitter now owns TweetDeck, sources say.
Reports that Twitter was looking to acquire TweeDeck surfaced earlier this year, and now CNN Money has confirmed that Twitter has completed the purchase of third-party Twitter client TweetDeck, noting that the company paid "more than $40 million in a mix of cash and stock."
Twitter has not yet confirmed the deal--it tweeted, "For all those who might be curious, we continue to not comment on rumors"--yet several other outlets, including the Next Web, have confirmed CNN Money's report.
What would Twitter want with TweetDeck?
TechCrunch writes that Twitter is looking to gain market share. After all, a Sysomos study released earlier this year found that a full 42 percent of tweets were sent using third-party apps, while 58 percent of tweets came from official apps, including 35.4 percent from Twitter.com. Of the non-official apps, UberMedia's Ubersocial holds the largest share of the market (16.4 percent), followed by TweetDeck with 13.1 percent and Echofon with 9.2 percent.
"It seems that Twitter just wasn't comfortable with allowing UberMedia to snatch another chunk of market share," TechCrunch explains. "After all, Twitter can't just go allowing Twitter-related startups and products to fall into the hands of those companies that aren't Twitter. Just ask UberTwitter and EchoFon, for example. As Mike [Arrington] reported in early May, sources close to Twitter revealed that an UberMedia acquisition would give them too much leverage over Twitter, and so the bidding war (or really, non-war) was on."
Media Bistro argues that the deal doesn't make sense and is a grab by Twitter to keep TweetDeck away from others. "TweetDeck as is (or really any desktop client, even Twitter For Mac) has no real place in Twitter's infrastructure. I'm not convinced they cared about owning TweetDeck at all - they simply cared that it wasn't owned by Ubermedia," writes Media Bistro, adding, "Bottom line: starting now, the TweetDeck many of you know and love is already (and inevitably) a thing of the past."
Twitter has previously acquired other companies that would assist it in engaging with its users beyond the web, such as Tweetie, a Twitter iPhone app. The company also updated its API in a move that appeared intended to discourage developers from developing additional third-party Twitter apps.
Why do you think Twitter wants TweetDeck? And how do you think TweetDeck will change? Let us know below.