TweetDeck may lead to showdown between Twitter, UberMedia
Not more than a week after reports indicated developer UberMedia may be making moves to create its own Twitter-like short message service, Twitter may be preparing to play defense. The company is said to be in "advanced talks" to acquire UK-based TweetDeck for $50 million, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
UberMedia was said to be close to purchasing TweetDeck's assets. This was likely in an effort to either solidify its position as the largest third-party Twitter developer, or possibly to quickly bolster whatever competitor to the microblogging service it has been said to be working on.
Twitter has taken an increasingly hostile stance towards developers who create applications that offer little above what its own in-house programs do, creating some consternation among its developers. UberMedia's programs have been said to account for as much as 11.5 percent of daily tweets.
An acquisition by Twitter of TweetDeck may not be too far fetched considering the companies already have a fairly close relationship. When the service introduced the "promoted tweets" functionality last year, Twitter allowed TweetDeck to also show these ads through a revenue sharing arrangement beginning in September.
The company is also looking to expand into the UK, and with TweetDeck already there it could make expansion plans for Twitter overseas much easier.
If UberMedia is actually creating a rival service and ends up acquiring TweetDeck, it's fairly likely that Twitter would pull out of these agreements and the application would lose what could be a significant revenue stream.
Representatives for UberMedia had earlier declined to comment on its plans, and requests for comment went unanswered as of press time from TweetDeck. Twitter also declined to comment, but had a message to reporters in the form of a tweet Monday afternoon.
"We don't comment on rumors. We don't provide off-the-record background on rumors. We don't wink twice or release puffs of smoke abt rumors," it reads.