Founder of London-based TweetDeck set to become multimillionaire after cash and shares deal is officially announced on Wednesday
Twitter is poised to acquire London-based startup TweetDeck in a $40m (�25m) deal that will make 36-year-old founder Iain Dodsworth a multimillionaire.
The San Francisco-based micro-blogging site is understood to have finalised a cash and shares deal which is expected to be officially announced on Wednesday.
On Monday talks that a deal had been finalised prompted the US company to put out a statement ? via Twitter of course ? which said: "For all those who might be curious we continue to not comment on rumours."
Dodsworth, a Sheffield Hallam university-educated programmer who has worked at the Prudential and PricewaterhouseCoopers and who counts himself "a Formula One obsessive", commented on Twitter that "an impressive number of people seem to have my mobile number and like to ring it at 4am".
TweetDeck, which employs around 15 staff, is based in the Old Street area of London which has been dubbed the 'Silicon Roundabout' due to the proliferation of promising technology startups that call it home.
Since being founded in 2008 TweetDeck, which allows users to "tweet like a pro" by customising their Twitter feed, has received more than $3m in funding but has never turned a profit.
But it has gathered a huge amount of momentum thanks to positive coverage from Twitter evangelists including Stephen Fry and actor Ashton Kutcher, one of the most followed users in the US.
Twitter reportedly entered the hunt to buy TweetDeck last month after reports emerged that the company was being courted by Bill Gross, an internet entrepreneur behind UberMedia which had already snapped up several startups in the sector.
Dodsworth launched the service after becoming frustrated at missing messages from friends.
In 2009 he said that TweetDeck would not look to build a revenue stream from trying to charge for access, but that it may look to "charge people for high-end usage" ? a similar strategy to that attempted by business networking site LinkedIn, which last week launched a $9bn flotation on the New York stock exchange.
The deal marks Twitter's sixth since 2009, according to Thomson Reuters' Deal Intel service. Twitter itself has been the subject of takeover rumours ? with Google and Facebook said to be interested.
The company, which is only five years old in its own right, has only recently started to tap advertisers for revenue and is on track to earn $150m in this year, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/24/twitter-to-buy-tweetdeck
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