Twitter has been the focus of many acquisition talks over the past couple of years, usually as the target of an acquisition by a Google or Microsoft or Yahoo, or Facebook.
Twitter has made a few acquisitions of its own, and I was trying, without much success, to find a list of the companies that it purchased, either for the technology that they offered, or for the people that they employed.
Twitter has blogged about the majority of acquisitions it has made, though not all. There may be other companies that Twitter purchased that I couldn’t locate any information on. If you know about any, and you’re so inclined, please let me know about them.
Here are the Twitter Acquisitions that I was able to find:
Summize
July 14, 2008
Summize was a 5 member startup based in Northern Virginia, and began with a focus upon sentiment analysis for the Web. They had developed a way of searching and filtering Twitter results that provided significant improvements to those features offered by Twitter itself.
Before Summize developed a way to search Twitter, their focus was upon providing sentiment analysis for reviews and blogs on products, people, videos, music, and more. I remember beta testing a blog widget for them back then.
The purchase price for Summize was estimated to be around $15M in cash and Twitter stock
Abdur Chowdhury, who was a Co-founder and the Chief Scientist at Summize, is now the Chief Scientist at Twitter.
Values of n
November 24, 2008
When the Twitter blog was introduced Rael Dornfest to the Twitter community, the focus was more upon what Rael would bring to Twitter than the products that Values of n had developed.
Before joining Twitter, he was O’Reilly’s Chief Technical Officer, and was the force behind Meercat, the first web-based feed aggregator.
Mixer Labs
December 23, 2009
The last post on Mixer Lab’s townme blog on October 15, 2009, introduced their GeoAPI which could be used to provide many location-based services. Finally, on December 23, 2009, the Twitter blog pointed out the introduction of their own Geotragging API a month earlier, and the acquisition of Mixer Labs.
Atebits
April 9, 2010
I searched for, but didn’t see a mention of the Atebits acquisitions on the Twitter blog. Still, a New York Times blog post does a good job of describing Twitter’s Acquisition of Atebits, who was known at the time for the Tweetie apps for using Twitter on iPhones and Mac computers.
The last post on the Atebits blog from developer Loren Brichter, “An Amazing Ride,” made the official announcement of the acquisition.
One of the pieces that came along with this acquisition is the assignment of a patent to Twitter, User Interface Mechanics, which describes an infinite scrolling method like the one presently in use at Twitter.
Cloudhopper
April 23, 2010
Cloudhopper specialized in building scalable SMS systems, and the incorporation of their technology into Twitter enabled the company to spread across the globe much quicker. And much of that was during the 8 months before Twitter acquiring Cloudhopper.
Small thought Systems
June 10, 2010
Before Twitter acquired Smallthought Systems, they were a client of the company, using their Dabble DB online database to manage internal projects, and their tool Trendly. In More Than Dabbling, Twitter introduces the Smallthought Systems team to the Twitter community.
Fluther team
December 21, 2010
Twitter didn’t acquire Fluther outright, but rather hired the employees of the site. The Twitter blog introduces the Q&A community team members to Twitter in Fluther Flocks to Twitter
Conclusion
Will Twitter be acquired by one of the major search engines or social networks on the Web sometime in the future?
Will they continue to make acquisitions that improve the quality of the services that they offer, and the technical knowledge behind it?
I’ll try to keep an eye out for future acquisitions by Twitter. If you hear of any, please let me know. Thanks.
“Smallthought Systems, the company behind an analytics service, Trendly, that tracks real-time changes and user trends for Web site owners.” from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/twitter-buys-an-analytics-company/
Twitter acquires Twithawk, TweetMeme, bizz.ly, Skout and TwitJump according to News|Woodside Capital Partners
I have never heard that twitter did any acquisition but yes I did heard that Facebook & Google tried unsuccessfully to acquire twitter. This is an interesting & valuable post which tells that twitter is working silently to rule the web world.
The information you have provided above on that basis I don’t think that anyone will succeed to acquire twitter but I’m sure that twitter continue to improve and keep present challenges before other social media sites.
Indeed, twitter is one of the largest networking sites ever and the reason is, they are a social AND business networking site.
Jim –
“Twitter acquires Twithawk, TweetMeme, bizz.ly, Skout and TwitJump according to News|Woodside Capital Partners”
I think you will find that Twithawk, TweetMeme and TwitJump are all companies started by Twitter to broaden their online presence, i don’t know where you got the information that they were owned by someone else from? Perhaps you could share it?
the workwear guy
Hi Workwear Guy:
Here is where I got it: http://blog.twithawk.com/news/twithawk-named-in-techcrunch-in-top-ten-digital-ma-deals-for-2010
In my opinion, Twitter will continue to acquire other companies to strengthen itself and grow in their own area.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for sharing where you found the information. As i said before, these companies were in fact founded by directors and investors of Twitter in hope of maximizing profits.
Hi MJ,
I have smallthought listed under the Dabble DB logo above. I didn’t come across an actual logo for smallthought itself.
Hi Jim and the workwear guy
I don’t believe that Twitter actually acquired those companies. The link Jim pointed to in his second comment notes that they are “potential acquisitions” for twitter as predicted by TechCrunch for 2010, but I didn’t see any evidence that the TechCrunch predictions came true.
Hi Shailender,
For some reason, I actually expected that there would be more companies acquired by Twitter than I found.
I possibly should have ended this post asking about which companies might be potential acquisitions targets by Twitter in the future.
Hi tdicello,
I could see Twitter continuing to reject companies trying to acquire them, and continuing to improve upon, and increasing the services that they offer, with an acquisition here and there to bring new technology and employees to the company.
Great websites, i definatly will check them out. its hard to say if these predictions actually came true or not, the companies have defiantly provided value and im sure twitter will use it in one way or another
Twitter is making acquisitions? I didn’t even know they had money. Of course, I haven’t really paid attention, but what exactly have they done to REALLY monetize? Nothing really stands out other than the gathering of investors.
Mark
Hi Ken,
The companies that I listed are ones that Twitter has actually acquired. Most of those acquisitions look to have been made to indirectly hire the people involved, and the knowledge and experience that they would bring with them to Twitter..
Hi Mark,
Most of the money that Twitter has to make acquistions like this seem to have come from financial backers. Twitter has been working on some methods to create money, such as promoting tweets and promoting trending topics. No idea how effective or lucrative those have been.
Twitter has acquired startup company Summify, a social aggregation service that collects news stories that are being shared on your social networks and puts them into a daily summary.
Thanks. I definitely should add Summify to this page.