TweetDeck, an increasingly popular tool for accessing the Twitter service from your desktop, is close to securing a round of angel funding to the tune of nearly $500,000 from seed funding house Betaworks, reports MediaMemo.
Update: funding has been confirmed. Amount is just south of $500,000, and comes not only from Betaworks but also from The Accelerator Group, Skype veteran Taavet Hinrikus, Gerry Campbell, Howard Lindzon and Roger Ehrenberg.
Update 2: peHUB confirms today (3/28) that the exact amount was $300,000.
TweetDeck is the work of one man, British programmer Iain Dodsworth, who says the TweetDeck Adobe AIR-powered and hence cross-platform desktop application has been downloaded 250,000 times since he launched it over last Summer, and that users are pushing 120,000 messages a day to their Twitter followers using the software.
For BetaWorks, this would be the fourth Twitter-related seed investment, after Summize (acquired by Twitter in July 2008), TipJoy and StockTwits.
I’m still a Twhirl fan, but TweetDeck – currently in public beta – does have some rather useful features that make it easier to manage your stream, especially if you’re following a lot of people actively. The app enables users to split their main feed into topic or group specific columns, thus allowing a broader overview of tweets. It’s mainly the UI that convinces users to switch to using TweetDeck instead of the many other services that are available. Dodsworth hopes to convince power users and companies to pay up for a pro version of the software at some point.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a whole ecosystem is being built around the Twitter service thanks to its free, open API approach and increasing base of micro-message spouting users, and it’s this slew of applications (here’s 5 good ways to keep track of Twitter apps) that makes Twitter even more valuable that it would be on its own, even if they haven’t gotten around to introducing whatever business model they have in store for monetizing the service (even though they’re starting to actually hire people for that).
The question is: what will happen if Twitter decides to license the use of its constant data stream, and how sticky are Twitter applications when any developer basically has the same resources to build something better than the fashion of the day?
What’s the incentive for people to keep using tools like TweetDeck, AlertThingy, Twhirl, My Social 24×7 or Twitterific, when they’re not paying for the service and the community exists elsewhere anyhow?
Iain is a great guy and Tweetdeck is a fantastic product. Congrats!
well great app after Twhirl which is simpler and faster but probably less sophisticated
I use twhirl but it does have some pretty significant memory usage issues and can be frustrating with it’s habit of disappearing windows. I use it to manage about several accounts. This news will provoke me to check out Tweetdeck – funding makes it likely the product will be around for a while and be a little more responsive to user needs and bug fixes.
Congratulations TweetDeck ! Definitely one of the better implementations of Twitter API.
fail.
Bizarre choice for funding, what is their exit?
I agree. I don’t see the end game.
This may be the best. app. ever. But I don’t understand how/why you build or invest in a company with no rev stream that is built on top of another company with no rev stream…especially in these times.
Seems like a house of cards to me…hopefully Im wrong.
Agreed. but on another token, consider it a a working Freemium model. what we’re using is the free. I can definitely see a premium/corporate UI being different, more advances etc.
Hell, he can even build branded versions of the app for corporate users. CNN and media outlets would be the first to jump on.
/my two cents.
I was a Twhirl fan myself and kept trying TweetDeck repeatedly but just always going back to Twhirl. Once I setup some groups and searches and forced myself to work with TweetDeck, I got used to it and couldn’t go back to anything else now.
Glad they got funding as it will only make the service more stable and get added features.
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Not at all surprised. Been using TweetDeck for a while and it’s brilliant. Congratulations!
Funny you should mention the interface as that’s exactly what made me move from using TweetDeck to TWhirl.
I just wanted a nice single column interface but with TweetDeck I would miss direct messages or replies if I did that as they only appeared off to the right and were hidden.
“how sticky are Twitter applications when any developer basically has the same resources to build something better than the fashion of the day”
Welcome to the world called open source, get better and build a community!
Hi,
I have just launched a TweetDeck for FriendFeed called FriendDeck (www.frienddeck.com). It is aggregates all your friendfeed social data in a deck format, allowing you to quickly search live updates and also profile information.
Paul Kinlan.
Found a nice twitter “service”: Send a (REAL) message in a bottle with twitter: http://www.tweetinabottle.com
I am so sick of reading about anything twitter, enough already…
TweetDeck has made managing my Twitter feed…. well, manageable.
Awesome, congrats to Betaworks and Tweetdeck. Iain is an awesome maker, so expect big things to come.
Twhirl all the way baby…TweetDeck seems like overkill to me. Congrats to the developer though.
Yup, Twhirl rocks. The UI, the functionality, … It rocks. =)
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OK. So how will he ever make money?
I bet he makes more money than twitter does.
Michael-John Wolfe comments: “I am obsessed with finding legitimate ways to make money online.”
How about starting with not posting ridiculous spam filled comments on TechCrunch?
“features that make it easier to manage your stream”
I find that at age 50, managing my stream has become somewhat of a chore. Sometimes I stand there forever waiting for an unsatisfying trickle, while at other times my RSS river of news gushes forth.
Seriously folks, do we really need these mission critical add-ons for Twitter? What do they accomplish for people in real professions?
TweetDeck provides a really interesting alternative view of Twitter. I like the groups function a lot and it’s a great innovation.
An app I’ve been working on, Followize, tries to provide another useful view of Twitter data, prioritising users over updates. I released version 5a23a4c of this evening (CIT) which adds loading of user timelines and originals-of-replies (we need a noun for these) via Ajax.
If you find Twitter moves too quickly and you want to slow down and investigate conversations a bit, it’s worth a try.
I’ve been a twhirl and tweetdeck fan ever since I can remember. These two apps are one of the first few apps I’ve profiled on my brand new site twi5.com
I’m happy that @IainDodsworth has been able to secure funding for this great app.
All the luck to him.
P.S. I guess after the twitter web interface, tweetdeck is the most used twitter app!
It’s an awesome app. I used it for quite some time but then I stopped using it because I started using Flock.
A ton of my friends still use tweetdeck though!
dxtr
http://stuckinf...es.blogspot.com
Robin, I would agree with you, while fun to build a business around Twitter, it is definitely risky. Twitter is still a business without a business model (or at least, without a revenue model), and therefore everything can change.
Good luck to TweetDeck. I guess that $500k is not that much, and that they might be able to flip it for $1 to $3M (assuming big[ger] companies will still be interested by this type of thing) .
Do you all realize that the reason Twitter and supporting apps gets so much attention on this site is because TechCrunch and all you other bloggers love it’s marketing value? What is the value to consumers with a life who have no interest in following you soapboxers and company people like the CEO for Zappos?
I have never seen a good answer to this yet. so can any of you bring forward good examples of usage for a consumer? How about the Techcrunch crew who spend tons of time on covering this stuff?
That’s really odd. That’s like giving an ebay seller or some other 3rd party that’s slaved to a service seed capital.
only in the UK.
Also, what is the advantage of telling Techcrunch that you got seed capital?
Customers don’t care. Now everybody knows exactly how much money you have. Spammers and BS vendors will spam you to no end.
Your competitors also know.
If you’re an LLC or private corp you don’t have to disclose tear sheet information at all.
For example, if I was a competitor to this service and I knew he only got 500k, I would know that he can hire a maximum of 3 western sr. devs for one year, and that he has nothing left in his budget.
It would give me the information I need to create a budget to create something slightly better without spending too much because now I know exactly how much clay he has.
one to grow on… * * *
This is interesting to me how a VC with a vested interest in Twitter already..decides to throw $500K into a application that runs off of another company they put VC into? To me that would seem like a conflict of interest, no only for BetaWorks but also for the Twitter guys. If the Twitter guys wanted to develop something that would compete with TweetDeck…pretty sure they would get a bad wrap from the VC’s.
Anyway..good luck to TweetDeck. Its a cool application. I think there are some other applications out there that could use the $500K a little better as a way to generate revenue for Twitter. Unless TweetDeck plans on sharing revenue (if they actually make $). We will see.
Congratulations!
TweetDeck and Twhirl are both part of the Twitdom database which comprises over 250 Twitter applications currently.
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TweetDeck rocks.
So how is Ian planning on using the money? Support more services like Identi.ca and CitySpeek.com? Hire developers?
Tweet Deck adds plenty of value to Twitter by enabling
- groups, for easy filtering,
- shrinking links (saves switching over to tinyurl when you know Twitter won’t do it automatically,
- retweeting, and
- generally makes Twitter a better, quicker and less chaotic experience.