TweetDeck Closure Letter Is A Sign Of Closer Ties With Twitter

Twitter‘s UK subsidiary TweetDeck has been sent a letter warning of imminent closure – but TechWeekEurope understands the popular Tweetdeck client will survive as it is, and the letter could signal a closer union between subsidiaryand its parent.

UK registrtation body Companies House has sent  a letter warning that Twitter has failed to renew Tweetdeck’s entry. and has three months to do so, or else the company will be dissolved. We understand that the lapse is deliberate, forming part of Twitter’s plans to phase TweetDeck out as an official subsidiary, bringing it fully under the wing of the micro-blogging giant.

Nothing is changing with the TweetDeck product, although a spokesperson would not comment on whether the Tweetdeck name might disappear from the it, or if any  other brand shifts are imminent.

Twitter previously allowed a multitude of clients from third parties, but has been building up a walled garden around Tweetdeck since it acquired the company, effectively shutting out rival client software that it believes offers little extra value outside of what it already offers. In August, Twitter updated guidelines on use of its API, introducing limits on the number of users that can access Twitter through an app.

TweetDeck decked

Twitter has effectively limited the size of other clients, ruling that any apps wanting 100,000 “individual user tokens” would need express Twitter permission to do so. In December, popular Twitter client Tweetro started to charge its users as it wasn’t able to maintain its expansion, thanks to the new  rules.

Twitter is more than happy for third parties to build applications that crunch data from the site, or do something Twitter isn’t doing, just not those that stamp all over its tweeting turf.

“TweetDeck gives the Twitter experience more flexibility and allows advanced users to gain valuable insight to what’s happening at this very moment on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson said. “We’ve been steadily innovating and improving TweetDeck, and expect to see much more of that to come.”

Sky News obtained the letter sent to Twitter from Companies House, which gave the company three months to renew the TweetDeck business as a separate entity, otherwise it would be dissolved.

TweetDeck, a hugely popular UK-based Twitter feed application, was acquired by Twitter in May 2011 for £25 million.

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