TweetDeck acquired by UberMedia for $30 million

TweetDeck, one of the world's most popular desktop Twitter clients, has been acquired for $30 million (in cash and stock) by UberMedia that is fast becoming the final destination for a number of Twitter-based startups. Just last month, the company had picked up UberTwitter, the world's leading Twitter app which enjoys tremendous traction among iPhone and Blackberry users. Twidroyd and Echofon are the other popular Twitter clients in UberMedia's portfolio.UberMedia was founded by Bill Gross, an entrepreneur who struck it rich during the early days of the internet. In fact, one of the startups that he founded (GoTo.com) is said to be the first company to successfully run a search engine that relied on sponsored search results and pay-per-click advertising, a model that has since been used by Google with spectacular results. UberMedia itself has been through a number of changes in recent times. Bill Gross started it as TweetUp and this later became PostUp. It is after the deal with UberTwitter that the company has been christened UberMedia.

TweetDeck was founded in 2008 by entrepreneur Iain Dodsworth and has raised less than $5 million in the last two years. It is a much-valued addition to the Twitter empire that UberMedia seems to be building. There have even been murmurs about UberMedia emerging as a competitor to Twitter. After all, Bill Gross' original idea of TweetUp was, crudely put, "AdSense for Twitter." However, Twitter itself got into the game swiftly and started its own platform for ads, thereby rendering TweetUp irrelevant. So, is there a Twitter - UberMedia contest on the cards? Well, only time will tell.

Sriram Mohan | YourStory | February 14th 2011 | Bangalore