Twitter and Tweetdeck: A Match Made In Heaven?

By Renee Mitson

As you may have heard, Twitter is in the process of acquiring TweetDeck. No one knows the numbers for sure, or what the final number will be but it is in the ballpark of $50 million and includes stock in Twitter.

Even though this might be appear to be a love story of sorts, do not be fooled. Buying TweetDeck was a completely defensive move. TweetDeck, owned by Uber Media is gaining a larger and larger influence on the Twitter-sphere, and Twitter feared that TweetDeck was gaining too much influence.

I completely understand this move, but I wish it were not so. TweetDeck just is not that cool. Here at KM we are Hootsuite users through and through. Even with the desktop option, TweetDeck is not intuitive and really somewhat limiting. Hopefully this acquisition does not include a further merger of the two platforms, Twitter and TweetDeck. For instance, it would be plausible to have special features to encourage Twitter users to switch over. Not because Twitter likes TweetDeck but because it helps to keep other platforms from becoming front-runners.

Also, consider the ramifications of TweetDeck having control of at least 20% of Twitter users, and an active 20% at that.

There is much more to this story, read the full battle at Tech Crunch