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| Twitter acquires messaging app to improve products |
To strengthen its community, Twitter acquired Sphere, a group chat app founded in 2016 to make conversations more interactive and organized.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But Sphere describes the app as a place that turns groups into vibrant communities.
Sphere was founded in 2016 by Nick D'Aloisio, a British computer programmer who later became a serial entrepreneur.
The app was originally used to record real-time questions and answers about micropayments. But it later became the focus of group discussions.
Although a separate area, it is intended to bring the organization into the mobile group discussions.
As detailed on the Sphere website, some features include feeds, auto-archiving, and reminders of important news. It also enables users to have interactive conversations categorized according to specific interests.
The acquisition of Sphere was the second deal for programmer D'Aloysio, who sold Summly news startup Summly to Yahoo for $30 million in 2013 at the age of 17.
Before becoming an Airbnb entrepreneur, he worked for two and a half years as a product manager at Yahoo. He founded D'Aloisio Sphere while studying computer science and philosophy at Oxford University, where he met his co-founder Thomas Halgas.
According to the Sphere blog, all of Sphere's small team of 20 people join Twitter. Sphere announced in a blog post that the standalone product will be phased out in November due to this acquisition.
Twitter acquires group chat app Sphere
Nick Caldwell, vice president of engineering for the platform, said on Twitter that Sphere helps Twitter solve its roadmap for private messaging communities and creators.
It will be particularly interesting to see the impact of Sphere on the Twitter community, a feature that launched in September to compete with Facebook groups.
The community allows users to join the space based on specific interests, such as sneaker collectors or skincare enthusiasts.
While the community is currently invite-only, Sphere may be able to speed up the process and make the feature more accessible to everyone.
Over the years, Twitter has acquired several other startups in the UK, the most famous of which is TweetDeck. It also acquired artificial intelligence companies Magic Pony Technology, Fabula.ai and Aiden.ai.