Seesmic buys Twhirl

Isn’t this interesting: Dave Winer has posted news about a popular AIR Twitter app called Twhirl which I have been using for a little while and which has also gained some prominence among local bloggers:

“Yesterday Seesmic announced that they’re buying Twhirl, the AIR-based Twitter client.”

Seesmic is a recent video startup owned by Loic Le Meur who posted 20 reasons why Seesmic bought Twhirl. Here are 11 of those reasons:

-Staying in touch with your friends using microblogging is much easier using a client than through your browser
-Thwirl is the #1 and coolest Twitter client with more than 100,000 downloads and 7% of all tweets posted per day
-Thousands of new users download Twhirl daily
-Twhirl works on Mac AND PC, soon on Linux too
-Twhirl lets you easily use all the advanced messaging options of Twitter (replies, direct messages)
-Twhirl added very cool features such as search and url shortening in a second
-Twhirl allows you to have multiple Twitter accounts opened simultaneously
-Twhirl not only posts on Twitter but also on Pownce and Jaiku, with more services coming soon
-Seesmic and Twhirl have been created exactly the same way, by listening to their communities and adding new features according to their popularity
-Twhirl has amazing feedback from its users and press coverage: Thwirl was just on Fox News
-We got in touch entirely through using Twitter and Twhirl… how cool is that? Okay, we also used Skype a bit to close the deal

None of this stuff really tells me why Seesmic would buy Twhirl. Ok, I haven’t actually used Seesmic yet, it is still in a private beta, but I still couldn’t why this made sense in a non-dotCom Bust kind of way until I watched this video where Loic explains the rationale:

One word popped up in my head when I saw the demo of a Twhirl/Seesmic combo service … Pownce! The reason I thought about Pownce was Pownce’s ability to insert photos into posts that you can see in messages and not just as links. This will take things a step further and when you combine the lifestreaming potential, this could well represent a pretty substantial shift in the messaging/lifestreaming space. As the very wise Marshall Kirkpatrick put it:

Seesmic plus Twhirl is of course just two very forward-looking organizations in a large, diverse economy of innovation. Look at this deal though and you’ll see a big part of the future of online communication technology, no matter who it is that makes it happen.

Technorati Tags:
twitter, seesmic, twhirl, loic le meur, purchase, messaging, video