Twitter Buys Tweetdeck For Power Users

After TechCrunch reported back in February that Tweetdeck was all but sold to UberMedia, there has been much speculation on Twitter’s role as the network or the client. Tweetdeck is a power user’s twitter client, and so the purchase would have taken a good proportion of those that create original twitter content one step further away from Twitter itself – giving UberMedia a much stronger negotiating position and the possibility of creating a parasitic networks as we mentioned last week.

It seems that Twitter has seen the risk involved with so many of its users only accessing its network through a possible future competitor’s client software and has swooped in to buy Tweetdeck for a reported $40-50 million in cash and Twitter stock. It may be a defensive buy, but it has brought a large proportion of power users under Twitter directly and is an impressive exit for the UK based Tweetdeck and its investors which to date is yet to demonstrate a business model.

With the most popular mobile and desktop clients under its umbrella, the last bastion of independence in the twitter universe is the web-based power user space currently headed by Hootsuite. Whether Twitter will keep Tweetdeck’s Facebook and other social network integration is also a mystery at this point, as removing it may alienate power users and devalue the product, whilst keeping it helps their main competitors.