TweetDeck was the second third-party application I ever used to manage my Twitter chatter. I started with twhirl when I first realized the Twitter website itself wasn’t going to cut it. Keep in mind this was the Twitter website as it stood a few years ago. It has made several advancements to keep users on their website, but even with the implementations throughout the years, people are still very much relying on their third-party apps.
First hitting the scene in 2008, TweetDeck has been one of the most popular and trusted third-party apps. It is packed full of awesome features that make managing not just your Twitter account, but a myriad of different social media accounts–and multiple accounts at the same time–incredibly easy. Unlike a few apps that have risen in popularity, TweetDeck has not revoked privileges that users have become reliant on in order to effectively manage their accounts and ways of being able to correspond.
In their three years of operation, it seems like TweetDeck has done just about everything right. And it paid off. It paid off big. News was released recently that TweetDeck has officially been acquired by Twitter for a whopping $40 million.
The offer made by Twitter is so surprising because it is $10 to $15 million more than what UberMedia was speculated to acquire TweetDeck for back in February. Looks like Twitter just couldn’t stand the thought of TweetDeck being acquired by another company specializing in third-party apps.
One of the main concerns many users have expressed since the acquisition news was first released is if Twitter is going to continue allowing users to manage their other social media accounts through TweetDeck. Now that it is an official Twitter application, it is very much possible for them to limit TweetDeck’s capability to Twitter-only. Another very large fear of the TweetDeck community is that now that Twitter has acquired TweetDeck, they could have been looking to merely shelve the app and take it out of the picture completely. It is agreed that this would be a very bad move on Twitter’s part, but I suppose we can only wait and see what happens with the future of TweetDeck.
Photo by Rosetta