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Twitter Tuesday - TweetUp buys Twidroid, renames it Twidroyd, gets it pre-loaded on Android phones
Hey, it's a big Twitter app acquisition, and Twitter's not the one doing the acquiring for once! Twidroid, a popular Android Twitter client, has been snapped up by Twitter ad company TweetUp. TweetUp plans to remain the app "Twidroyd," to avoid any trademark conflict with LucasFilm (the Star Wars guys), who own the "droid" trademark.
Even bigger news: Twidroyd (that still feels awkward to type) will come preloaded on a bunch of upcoming Android phones. Looks like a third-party app is going to fight the good fight against Twitter's official client. Bundling it with phones is basically the only way to do that, so I'm very glad TweetUp thought of this. Twidroyd is better than the official client in a lot of ways, anyway. Just ask Engadget, which rated it the best Twitter app on Android.
I should mention that TweetUp also bought a news aggregator site called PopURLS, but that's much less interesting to the future of Twitter.
The first big success for Twitter's Promoted Trending Topics happened over the weekend, when the NBA paid to have basketball superstar Lebron James show up on Twitter trends. The basketball star, who's about to sign with a new team, also just joined Twitter himself. He's @kingjames, and he's picked up nearly 100,000 followers before posting a single tweet. ReadWriteWeb thinks James' first tweet could be the announcement of his new team.
If you're into shopping, look out for Twitter's new @earlybird account. This mysterious new account wasn't accepting any followers until a few days ago, but Twitter says there will be very interesting things in store for it. Basically, it's a new form of Twitter advertising that you can opt into to get Twitter-exclusive deals and news about products. I'm not sure who the partner companies are, yet, but this is a great way to do advertising. If you don't want to see it, or don't care, just don't follow. I love it when Twitter figures out ways to make money without annoying me!
Hey, you might have heard that Thing Labs' amazing Twitter client, Brizzly, was just sold to Foursquare. You may also have heard that it was just sold to Facebook. Bogus rumors, all, says Thing Labs' Jason Shellen. Don't believe the hype: Brizzly is cool, but it's not going anywhere just yet. Plus, if that had really happened, don't you think I would have led off the column with it?
Got a great Twitter tip, or an app that needs reviewing? Let me know. I'll be back here again next Tuesday, with more news from the ever-evolving twittersphere.
