One of my favorite industry blogs, ReadWriteWeb, has a good analysis of the recent acquisition of the popular AIR-based Twitter desktop client, twhirl. If you’re not familiar, twhirl is regarded as the most popular Twitter client available today – with a rapidly-growing user base.
Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch first broke the news:
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.
In the ReadWriteWeb analysis, Marshall Kirkpatrick mentions the “best thing about Twhirl” (by the way, I’m going to recommend that our marketing team use Marshall’s description, “the AIR/Flex/Flash ecosystem is made for hotness”:
AIR – Cross Platform RIA
The best thing about Twhirl is that it’s built in Adobe AIR. While Microsoft’s Silverlight is coming on hard and fast, the AIR/Flex/Flash ecosystem is made for hotness and has the most momentum in the grassroots developer community.
AIR lets developers write in HTML, Javascript and Flash – but run it on the desktop – of a Windows, Mac or Linux computer. These are Rich Internet Applications – apps that sit on the desktop and function outside the browser, but that are tied to the web and leverage connectivity as well. Check out Redmonk’s RIA Weekly Podcast if you want to get excited about RIAs on a regular basis.
Congratulations to Marco and the Seesmic team. This deal has a lot of promise. I’m very excited to see AIR-based applications become the subject of compelling Web 2.0 acquisitions.
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