Twitter has been on a trip to the twitter client buffet a couples of times it seems after buying Tweetie last year and now TweetDeck this month. TweetDeck is one of the more popular cross-platform clients available on Windows, MacOS X, Android and iOS and it can connect to a variety of social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and others.
I just wonder what Twitter’s motivation is for buying out the client software from the independent developers. I’m not surprised that the developers are happy to walk away with many millions of dollars for their clients but it does beg the question as to what Twitter is going to do with TweetDeck given that Twitter has its own cross-platform client already.
The cynic in me thinks that Twitter will simply discontinue TweetDeck despite its wide range of connectivity. Twitter wants to start making money and the only way it can do that successfully is by being able to rapidly evolve and/or expand its available APIs. Unfortunately, clients such as TweetDeck don’t display objects such as ads or promoted tweets or trends – exactly what Twitter doesn’t want at this stage in the game.
The optimist in me hopes that Twitter might do something positive with TweetDeck given that it makes updating multiple accounts across a range of social networks a snap. If it does end up disappearing I might look into using HootSuite instead.
In the long run, it might be cheaper for Twitter to buy out the client with the larger install bases and let the less popular ones fizzle out as people move towards the official client. As Twitter chases the dollar for its investments we may see the range of clients slowly whittled away.
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