Comments on: Why Twitter Shouldn’t Pull the Plug on TweetDeck

By: Ashley Goetz

Ashley Goetz — Thu, 05 May 2011 21:54:36 +0000

If Twitter acquires TweetDeck, they better realize the need for a desktop application that can schedule tweets and give you customizeable column views. If they kill it off without understanding those needs, we’ll all have to move to HootSuite, which is cute and functional, but I loves me the interface of TweekDeck. Simple, and sleek.

By: Roberto Lebron

Roberto Lebron — Thu, 05 May 2011 19:40:33 +0000

Thank you for a well thought-out article. I agree it would be a shame to kill TweetDeck. TweetDeck is clearly superior to Twitter’s client, which is why it’s used by power users. A more desirable course of action, as some have suggested here, would be to rebrand it as Twitter’s own client, perhaps with Pro pricing for some features, or to make it the Pro version, again charging for its use. We can only hope.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 05 May 2011 08:32:45 +0000

If Twitter want to kill Tweetdeck, all they really need to do is stop updating it, which is entirely possible. The other two possibilities I can think of would be to rebrand it as (or merge with) Twitter’s own official desktop client or to market it as a premium product and charge “pro” users a one-off fee to use it (with value added from other features).

By: Derek Lambert

Derek Lambert — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:46:49 +0000

There’s no way that Twitter would pay $50m for TweetDeck just to open a European HQ. It could do that for a fraction of that cost. It’s outbidding the competition for TweetDeck.

By: David Becker

David Becker — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:33:09 +0000

Having worked at a big media company I have seen many ways to kill a business without shutting it down outright. Not that it would be Twitter’s intention stated or otherwise. It’s just that most mergers and acquisitions fail — 50-80% of the time according to research.

By: ThePro

ThePro — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:21:46 +0000

And remove features like deck.ly, which would be really BAD.

Also, I feel they will remove facebook intergration too.

By: Jonathan R

Jonathan R — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:30:53 +0000

TweetDeck also offers the ability to browse other social media feeds, like Facebook and Google Buzz. Keeping it around would help Twitter as a firm expand beyond the Twitter API into other social messaging networks.

By: Ankit

Ankit — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:20:14 +0000

Interesting Hypothesis. It would be a shame to kill Tweetdeck especially for the reasons that Twitter shouldn’t be alienating the developer ecosystem anymore than it already has.But given Twitter’s renewed focus on its own web/mobile version, there is a definite redundancy in the form of having another client. On a totally different approach, if it buys Tweetdeck (which i think is one of the most used third-party client there is), is there a possibility of Twitter throttling API, bandwidth et all for other popular clients like Hootsuite etc. and target complete traffic on its own properties

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:04:46 +0000

There has been plenty of commentary by those who believe that Twitter is buying it simply to shut it down — these are my thoughts about why that would be a bad idea, that’s all. Thanks for the comment.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:03:48 +0000

I agree that would make sense, KRM — a lot more sense than killing it. Thanks for the comment.