Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Twitter Shuts TweetDeck

So long, third party Twitter apps? Those in the Southern California high tech ecosystem might remember the bidding battle that Pasadena-based Ubermedia had with Twitter over Twitter client software firm Tweetdeck a couple of years ago. For awhile, it looked like Ubermedia had acquired the popular Twitter client for around $30M--only to have Twitter trump those efforts and ultimately acquired Tweetdeck in May of 2011.

However, it looks like Ubermedia has ultimately become the winner in that front, after Twitter announced that it is shutting down TweetDeck, to focus solely on web-based versions of the tool. Twitter said it will discontinue support for TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone by early May, and they will stop functioning shortly thereafter. The shutdown also will remove support for Facebook integration in TweetDeck.

It's unclear where that currently leaves Ubermedia, which owns popular Twitter clients UberSocial, Echofon, Plume, among with other mobile apps. The firm reached an armistice with Twitter over third party client access to Twitter's APIs in 2011, and looks to have since broadened its list of applications and focus beyond just Twitter.

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