San Francisco video/chat startup Seesmic has acquired Twhirl, a popular application created by German developer Marco Kaiser that allows users to access the Twitter service directly from their desktop, and also cross post to other services like Pownce and Jaiku. The acquisition price is not being disclosed.
Twhirl is considered among the better third party Twitter applications. ReadWriteWeb, for example, just yesterday identified it as the third most used method for posting to the Twittersphere, behind the web and instant messaging, and just in front of Twitterific. It has been downloaded 100,000 or so times.
Seesmic says they will continue development of the application and eventually integrate their own service into Twhirl, making it the official Seemsic desktop client.
It’s important to note that Michael Arrington is a minor investor in Seesmic and so we won’t add a lot of commentary on the transaction. Look for a company announcement soon.
Update: Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur announces his reasons for the acquisition on his blog, along with the following video:
Talking in the third person now are we Mike?
Nice pickup Loic!
Any word on what they picked this up for?
Funny, I saw this via Michael’s twitter through my twhirl installation. Very cool application.
@James Are you OK? Must be very young.
Hm, this should be interesting to see how Seesmic gets integrated into Twhirl.
I like Twhirl as well, so congrats to the Twhirl folks, but I’m not sure what the synergy is with Seesmic.
thanks Sean!
Lux: Twhirl was already adding Seesmic support in Twhirl and Seesmic was working on a client, so that is already two great reasons. More reasons to come in my own post in a bit.
I went back to regular tweets again since I found that Twhirl rocks. Good pick up by Seesmic, should be interesting to see how they integrate.
Rex
so is this the first acquisition of a purely AIR-based app? I can’t think of any others of consequence…
Smart!
Feature request #1: how about a button at the top to go back to the main timeline (after you’ve clicked on a name, etc.), or just make clicking the logo do that?
#2: eliminate delays by getting tweets via XMPP instead of polling.
Nice combo… can’t wait to see how it will be integrated into seesmic.
By the way, Mike you’re link to Twiterific is broken/wrong. Thought, I’d let you know.
cheers,
Armand
Umm the link to twitterific is going to a site whose domain name expired.
Twitterrific is http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific not twitterrific.com, Mark.
So this is why Loic Lemeur was polling with the question, “If you have a blog and are on Twitter and had to choose, which would you pick?” And he got only a 2-to-1 margin in favor of a blog. He sounded surprised that the Twitter score was as high as it was. (BTW, I voted Twitter.)
It’s also interesting to see that a startup, itself yet to make dollar-one, is acquiring other properties. The strategy intrigues me.
I love twhirl, I hope seesmic continues with the development. Twhirl while still lacking some features has much more than most of the other clients out there.
http://digg.com/tech_news/Seesmic_acquires_Twhirl
Digg it here.
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I don’t use TWhirl to twitter but I’ve often looked at Seesmic, I’ll be following this as it develops.
Gabe: you got them will talk to Marco
Rick says “It’s also interesting to see that a startup, itself yet to make dollar-one, is acquiring other properties. The strategy intrigues me.”
Simple, go faster. More reasons to come on my post.
félicitations Loic. T’as vraiment le flair ! c’est un outil essentiel a integrer avec seesmic
Very nice. I use twhirl and just got into Seesmic. Should be fun.
Loic
first thing you need to add is the ability for links to open in the new tab, not just the current new window. It’s one key reason I’ve stuck with Twitteriffic for so long
This is very interesting.
As a developer using the seesmic API I find it interesting that instead of keeping to their original mantra of building what the users want, they buy widgets etc. which I can’t personally remember anyone asking for.
I have a DB of the whole 141,480 videos and 2,768 users who have posted a video, and not one of them has cried out for an AIR client. In fact, if you look at the videos from today, what they are asking for are simple functions - a search, blocking users, etc.
Is Loic getting excited by the $$$? I hope not, I’ve lived through watching $5m funding go down the drain with RemoteApps.com, and I would hate to see a repeat.
Sorry, still don’t get Seesmic! Very boring video chats.
It seems to be just cloning around twitter/YT
In any case, good luck!
So this is job security for Critter, as he reverse-engineers Twhirl. He was a good acquisition, too.
Loic et al. Yay! I love Twhirl. It can be a little tricky to support sometimes, but I’ll talk to Johann and others about that later.
Someone above asked, but this isn’t the first AIR app you’ve adopted into the Seesmic family. Are you going to sport a Twhirl tattoo, now Loic? I think you should get the tat in an interesting place… The Haight.
Congrats, good call.
Hey Loic, if I click on your name in your comment it goes to http://www.loiclemeur.con
Better switch that to .com
Actually, given where they were both heading, that makes perfect sense! I suspect this will prove to be a formidable combination once they’ve integrated.
Congrats Seesmic & Twhirl!
…actually, forget what I wrote, I forgot, it’s not about the user, it’s about the dollar. Shame that’s fucked too
I started using twhirl last week and so far I am 90% happy with it. I wish it could post to tumblr, but I am sure that soon enough it will be able to do that too.
And will we get a blog widget one day so we can leave video-based comments ?
Personally I’m a snitter fan - can you tell?
Anyone experiencing Twhirl problems? I can’t see who’s tweets are on my Twhirl. This problem existed about 2-3pm PST and it hasn’t been fixed since. I restarted the app a few times…
Nvm. Just did a restart and had to update to v0.7.5
loiclemeur.con = very funny. Ah Ah.
can someone tell us the price tag?
Seesmic, hyped as the video Twitter, is destined for the deadpool.
Voltaire said the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire. And Seesmic isn’t Twitter and, in a particular way, it isn’t really video, either.
Seesmic isn’t Twitter because Twitter’s amazing utility is in its instancy. Twitter is fast–faster than email, than SMS, than a quick phone call. At the very moment of an event or news from your friends or anyone else, you are notified with a happy robin twirp (if you, like I, have the good taste to use the Twitterific application). Seesmic’s video certainly ads something–I’ll address that below–but it is not enough value to make up for losing all that speed. You can follow hundreds of Twitter feeds because they are all skimmable, fixed length and (as I say) fast.
Seesmic is chunky and slow.
Ultimately, it is a video bulletin board. A board for a species that learned to talk and then learned to really love talking, and they invented mirrors, too, and invited them into the ménage a trois. Seesmic is twenty-odd royal portrait painters and a few court stenographers at the imperial command of Seesmic user jaimiecroft discussing today’s top post: What do you do? Five thousand years of civilization and we learn that if he is not sleeping or working, his favourite thing to do is collect baseball cards. Then he shows us some cards. I’m riveted.
And you have to watch it all, because there is no ability to zip through what people are saying. They could allow for a fast-forward that kept voice at the same pitch with a close-caption. Like the ticker-taped Breaking News segment on Wonder Showzen! (timecode 02:14) Or if they wanted to be at all like Twitter, they could impose a limit. Ten seconds and then shut up. In ten seconds you could Seesmic-Tweet a haiku, our understanding of the relationship between Tom and Katie, or the person who is your everything. Or the founding so-called principles of the United States, or even the free health care/expensive data plans version that we Canadians roll with. Or a fart joke. Whatever: ten seconds then CUT! Word invention: a smoosh, ie the perfect ten-second Seesmic post.
Seesmic just opened for public use but I’ve been beta testing it for a while. It is awful. Sinister pony-tail men with lathered European accents dissecting the deep meaning of their abdomen tattoos. Faded grey people mumbling about something less interesting than the Wal-Mart family portraits on the wall behind them.
I ask myself, do I really want to see bloggers?
Even those with something to say might be better heard than seen. I cherish listening to Howard Stern on Sirius radio, but I never want to watch his gaunt Joey-Ramone face. The time and effort and aesthetics of video production that hold our cultural currency make these home-videos torture to watch. If you use YouTube to search for unwatched videos that are panned as boring then Seesmic is for you.
Seesmic is not video in the way we ever want video to be. Consider a technology or technique that makes the job harder or more annoying. It doesn’t exist for long. And in the purgatory meantime, we shout, that’s not a car! Do you call that a dishwasher? Etc.
I do believe, as with Twitter, that in addition to the fart jokes and Celtic tattoos and ponytails, humans will invent increasingly satisfying ways to use video online. And not just in the porn sense. It just won’t be the current Seesmic way.
Seesmic does offer one flash of accidental greatness: the founder’s hilarious blog. Mr. Loic Le Meur reveals to all us wannabe web start-upers the successful formula for getting a Web 3.0 up and running. (The Internet is also about sharing information; thanks for helping the little guy!)
So what’s the secret?
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (of Skype) gave him his seed money of nearly six million dollars. They are his friends. As are all the rich gatekeepers of online innovation.
So once you have amazingly rich and well-connected friends, just copy a useful superstar like Twitter, then take an inevitable variant, like video, and mix.
Presto: six million in your pocket.
What, as Oprah says, a lightbulb moment. So much for my idea about Twitter TV. The only gatekeepers I know work the doors at The Falcon Club.
that’s a seriously long comment.
Ok so now we have the arguments on TC.com, on LLM.com, on Twitter etc. etc. All that is really awesome and we sincerely wish you all the best.
But now we want the acquisition price
Congratulations to Marco. He has built a great piece of software.
Is that why all the “paused” twirls lately?
And let the Adobe Air development floodgate/goldrush begin!!!!
Yea, I’m not a big fan of Seesmic (@37), but integrating it into Twhirl sure is a smart move. Although, why acquire Twhirl since the creator has already integrated Seesmic?
Will Seesmic grow through M&As?
Its a good software to get.
please, post the deal terms. what I am dying to know is what it takes for one company that matters a lot to a small group of The 250 to buy another company that matters less to more of The 250.
seesmic is slow.
theres a post on this comments. A serious one
lol!
Dag yo. I write AIR apps. Anyone wanna buy one?
“Twitter is fast–faster than email, than SMS, than a quick phone call. At the very moment of an event or news from your friends or anyone else, you are notified with a happy robin twirp”
@37 - How is it faster than SMS?
Am I the only one with perspective here?
2/3 of the code is done for you via http://twitter.com/help/api so basically they paid for code that most spin-up for giggles. All the power to the authors of twhirl and not discounting it’s value to the twitter scene? but hyping this up as an acquisition is pushing it a little.
It’s like someone writing a blog post everytime some buys a template from Monster Templates.
“…Seesmic acquires a PSD from Monster Templates, here’s 20 reasons why..”
1. It’s already done.
2. It’s cheap.
3. I need some PR..
4. I really need some PR.
5. I got friends at Adobe whom need AIR installs.
6. See the above 5 and repeat until you reach 20.
-
Scott Barnes
Note: this opinion is of my own and not of my employer, Microsoft.