I'm always suspicious when I see 'in talks' sort of articles because no acquisition discussion I've ever heard of ever had a 'feel free to share this with the press' clause, and there is a real chance that by having actual talks become public, they will fail.

So one wonders, is Tweetdeck leaking this to see if someone else might come to the table? Twitter to see if the market thinks its a stupid idea? Some disgruntled employee/founder who doesn't want the deal to go through? Like I said, I get suspicious.

I saw a lot of these leaks behind the scenes, and received a few myself, and 90% of the time it is either lawyers or investors who leak the information

It seems strange that this article doesn't reference the reported acquisition of TweetDeck by Uber Media back in February.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/ubermedia-tweetdeck/

EDIT: Thanks for the info/links. This report certainly makes a lot more sense given that the Uber Media deal never actually closed.

That acquisition didn't actually happen. It was just rumored and TC never updated their article.

That's useful to know, I assumed it was a done deal. CrunchBase stills shows that article as the most recent info.

It was chased up but Dodsworth stayed quiet on the subject: http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/03/30/tweetdeck-still-wont-con...

If this should happen, it feels like it'd be a desperate move. TweetDeck goes completely against the aesthetics and principals Twitter uses in it's various clients, so I assume it'd be purely for the users.

TweetDeck is the one twitter client (at least, that I know of) that makes Twitter useful. The ability to have numerous columns all live updating lets you really see current trends across just about anything you want in the twittersphere. It took TweetDeck for me to finally see why Twitter was useful. I wonder if that angle has anything to do with all of this.

Columns is nothing original to TweetDeck - hootsuite, seesmic (desktop + web), cotweet, peoplebrowsr all have 'em.

>> TweetDeck goes completely against the aesthetics and principals Twitter uses in it's various clients

My thoughts exactly. I've never understood why TweetDeck was so popular, as the UX is horrible. It's a clumsy non-native app that lacks the polish of Twitter's other clients. I've tried it several times, but I can't bear to use it for more than five minutes.

Ultimately I don't see what Twitter would gain from this.

You mean their "own" users?

Another thing about TweetDeck that might be interesting to other HNers: Max Howell, the creator of Homebrew, works for them.

http://www.methylblue.com/

Looks like Twitter is a little worried about Ubermedia acquiring Tweetdeck and creating an alternate micro-blogging site..

Yes, I agree.

I wouldn't be surprised if they acquired Tweetdeck with the view to staff up a London office and close out Ubermedia, and in the process mothballed Tweetdeck itself.

Interesting negotiations considering the insanely high amount of leverage Twitter has.

"That's a really nice Twitter client you've got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it..."

twitter's leverage is limited by structural constraints in maintaining a good developer ecosystem.

Which they've demonstrated that they are willing to test the limits on multiple occasions recently (ubersocial, "no new clients" post, etc).

Twitter have explicitly said they don't see a lot of value in third-party client software, so that doesn't seem likely to constrain them here.

I'd think the law limits their leverage, too.

I don't think twitter can threaten, directly or indirectly, to cripple tweetdeck in any way if the sale doesn't go through or if they sell to another party.

Another nail in the coffin for client app developers!

At 50 million this is a rather nice solid gold and diamond encrusted nail.

If owning 10% of Twitter users results in a mere $50M pay day, Twitter has serious problems.

I wonder if this is a talent acquisition, a product acquisition, or a user acquisition (to prevent creation of an alternate service, either by TweetDeck or Ubermedia as ashbrahma suggested[1].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2460541

... I find it hard to believe they are concerned by the tune of $50million that TweetDeck would create a viable competing service.

That said, I find it hard to believe TweetDeck is worth anywhere near $50million. Based on what revenues and how?

To me this is probably for the following reasons: 1. Talent acquisition (15 employees) 2. Build this up into a pro premium set of tools 3. Much less than $50m frankly I think tweet deck can't be generating more than $2-3m in revenue. I'd bet 15-20m is the price.

If Tweetdeck is mostly contractors, I hope we don't see another HuffPost syndrome where people walk off because they saw things as being unfair.

It's the employee base twitter seems to be interested in. It cannot go with tweetdeck UI given it has already finalized on how it wants people to see twitter (with tweetie acquisition).

Another reason can be deck.ly. That is something which twitter does not have at this point.

Likely good news for the Hootsuite crew.

Because less competition or means someone else will buy them? If tweet deck gets acquired it wouldn't surprise me to see hoot suite in talks with ubermedia

tweetdeck kicks ass, it's the only twitter client i use except ubertwitter. but it needs an API badly...(the amazing things I would do!) I hope this acquisition goes through.

You want an API for an application that does nothing but consume an API? Why not use the Twitter API?

their UI is really good i don't want to have to spend the time to reinvent the wheel I just want to add some special search filters that require scripting

I use Tweetdeck exclusively on PC and Android. Love it. And speaking of filters, I wish you could set global filters across all columns.

Please god no. I'm going to have dickbars all over my desktop now.