TechCrunch just announced that Loic Le Meur’s web video service Seesmic has bought Twitter client Twhirl.
Twihrl is a very good Twitter client and very similar to my favorite, Snitter. It’s an Adobe Air app and available for free.
I guess Seesmic is planning to make it the default desktop app for its online video service. After all, Seesmic is really not much else than a video version of Twitter (and hence a lot less useful in my opinion).
TechCrunch doesn’t have any information about the purchase price, but I’m sure it was worth the while for the developers, Marco Kaiser. I can only assume that he is going to continue developing Twihrl as well and maybe become an employee with Seesmic (Update: this is confirmed by Le Meur in his post below).
Loic Le Meur has 20 reasons why Seesmic bought Twhirl, but apparently he is shy about revealing them, as the post is down right now:
Update after reading Le Meur’s post: Interestingly, little in Le Meur’s post refers to Seesmic, except the confirmation that they will indeed add video support.
I don’t buy the argument that Twhirl being based in Germany is going to make any difference for the adoption of either Twitter or Seesmic in Germany. Germany hasn’t even warmed up to blogging yet.
Good to see that people are making money with giving software away for free and that the web developer community still seems to think that desktop clients matter.
Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb said Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web's Future. I think is true