UberMedia, the company that has been buying up Twitter apps including UberTwitter and EchoFon, is making its biggest catch yet &8212' TweetDeck.
The acquisition was first reported in TechCrunch, and was later confirmed by All Things Digitala4a4s Peter Kafka, who said that UberMedia will pay $30 million in cash and stock. He said the deal isna4a4t complete (which is presumably why neither company has announced it), but a4Aita4a4s pretty far along, with signed term sheets, etc.a4
This seems to solidify UberMediaa4a4s plan to become the biggest player in the Twitter ecosystem &8212' or as chief executive Bill Gross described his goal last month, a4Athe best partner to Twitter in enhancing the Twitter ecosystem.a4
Ita4a4s interesting to look back at a list of apps that Twitter published last September. Among the apps not developed by Twitter itself, TweetDeck was the most popular, except for Twitpic (which is a photo-sharing service, not an app for accessing Twitter). And of the top five third-party apps on that list, UberMedia now owns three.
At the time, VentureBeata4a4s Owen Thomas used the list to argue that external third-party developers aren&'t particular important to Twitter anymore. However, if a single company controls most of the big apps (Loic Le Meuer of competitor Seesmic says UberMedia&'s apps are now responsible for 20 percent of all daily tweets), that equation starts to change.
London-based TweetDeck raised less than $5 million in funding from Betaworks (also an UberMedia investor) and others.
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Companies: Betaworks, TweetDeck, Twitter, UberMedia
People: Bill Gross
Companies: Betaworks, TweetDeck, Twitter, UberMedia
People: Bill Gross
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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