Twitter officially buys TweetDeck

After months of rumours, Twitter has officially picked up the TweetDeck personal browser client for its micro-blogging site, marking further consolidation of the third-party Twitter apps.

Twitter reps confirmed the news on the company's official blog yesterday, citing TweetDeck as "a great example of a third-party developer."

"This acquisition is an important step forward for us," Twitter said. "TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about. In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love."

TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth also chimed in on his company's official blog.

"I am extremely happy and proud to let you know that TweetDeck has been acquired by Twitter," he said. "We completed the deal on Tuesday and are now in the process of 'joining the flock'."

Dodsworth boasts that Twitter bought out TweetDeck because of the client's "unwavering focus on providing high-quality tools and services for the Twitter-centric power-user." This seems all sweet and nice, but Dodsworth didn't offer much else in terms of the deal's specifics — except that the core TweetDeck team would be staying put in London. It's unclear if the team will be moved out to Twitter's San Francisco headquarters or retained by the company as a satellite group in the UK.

Notably, it has been reported that Twitter will be paying up to US$40 million in cash and stock for TweetDeck. Twitter has bought up quite a few other companies in the last few years, including Summize and Tweetie, the latter of which evolved into the official Twitter mobile app. Not to mention that rumours have swirled that Twitter itself might be bought out by Microsoft or Google, among others.

Via ZDNet US