Twitter has recently announced that it has acquired Slack-competitor Quill to help improve its direct messaging tools. However, the financial terms of the acquisition were not released.
The acquisition comes a few days after Parag Agrawal was named the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, replacing co-founder Jack Dorsey.
Founded by Ludwig Pettersson, former creative director of Stripe, Quill is a messaging app for communication and collaboration for teams similar to Slack, focused on keeping messages organised with minimal notifications. As a part of the acquisition, Pettersson will join Twitter’s Conversations team under Oji Udezue.
“We’re bringing their experience and creativity to Twitter as we work to make messaging tools like DMs a more useful & expressive way people can have conversations on the service,” says Nick Caldwell, General manager for core technology, Twitter.
On their official website, Quill posted:
“Together with Twitter, we will continue to pursue our original goal — to make online communication more thoughtful, and more effective, for everyone. Quill will be shutting down, but its spirit and ideas will continue on. You’ll be able to export your team message history until 1 pm PST, Saturday, December 11th, 2021, when we will be turning off our servers and deleting all data. For all active teams, we’re issuing full refunds.”
Lately, Twitter has been ramping up its acquisition efforts in an attempt to speed up the addition of new features. To date, the company has acquired more than 62 firms and spent more than $980M for it, says Tracxn. Also, the company announced six deals already in 2021, most since 2015.
Today TFN takes a look at the 5 most key acquisitions Twitter has made in the past:
Periscope
Founders: Joseph Bernstein, Kayvon Beykpour
In 2015, Twitter acquired live-streaming app Periscope for $86.6M to enhance its video capabilities, including real-time broadcasting services and boost user engagement. The micro-blogging site witnessed over 1M logs within its first 10 days of debut.
TweetDeck
Founders: Iain Dodsworth
In 2011, Twitter acquired TweetDeck, an application for organising display, for $40M. Like other Twitter apps, it interfaces with the Twitter API to allow users to send and receive tweets and view profiles.
TellApart
Founders: Josh McFarland, Mark Ayzenshtat
TellApart is Twitter’s largest acquisition at $479M. The company acquired a digital advertising platform to boost Twitter’s revenue generated by the ads.
Scroll
Founders: Kushal Dave, Sachin Doshi
Earlier this year, Twitter acquired Scroll, a subscription service that lets users read articles without the ads, pop-ups, and other clutter. With Scroll, the company also wanted to build and shape a future subscription service as well.
Revue
Founders: Martijn de Kuijper, Mohamed El Maslouhi
In January, Twitter acquired the Dutch startup Revue, a service that makes it free and easy for anyone to start and publish editorial newsletters. The company has also created a durable incentive model through paid newsletters for writers.
Restructuring leadership team
In other news, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is restructuring the leadership team across engineering and product. This move comes “to drive increased accountability, speed, and operational efficiency,” Twitter said in a regulatory filing.
The company is also establishing a General Manager (GM) model for Consumer, Revenue, and Core Tech, which will be led by Kayvon Beykpour, Bruce Falck, and Nick Caldwell, respectively.
Lindsey Iannucci also joined the leadership team as Chief of Staff and Vice President of Operations to support Mr. Agrawal in strengthening operations across the leadership team, and the Company.
As part of these changes, Dantley Davis, Design and Research Lead will also be stepping down from his position at the Company effective December 31, 2021, and will remain an advisor through the end of the first quarter of 2022 to ensure an orderly transition.
