TweetDeck, Gnip and more: Strategic acquisitions by Twitter that will now be handed to Elon Musk

After months of pitching, billionaire Elon Musk has finally acquired Twitter. The social media company confirmed the development on Monday, announcing that it had entered into a ‘definitive agreement’ to be acquired by an entity owned by Musk, for $ 54.20 per share in cash, a 38 percent premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on 1 April, 2022.

Musk and his backers will be paying a total of $44 billion for the acquisition. The billionaire has secured $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is providing an equity commitment of nearly $21.0 billion. With this, Musk is also set to take charge of all the existing acquisitions of Twitter Inc.

Since being founded in 2006, Twitter has made a series of strategic acquisitions that will now be handed to Musk.

Tweet Deck

One of the first strategic acquisitions by Twitter Inc was Tweet Deck, a third party social media dashboard application for the management of Twitter accounts. The social media giant paid $40 million for the acquisition back in 2011.

Tap Commerce

In 2014, Twitter acquired mobile ad retargeting startup Tap Commerce for $100 million. Tap Commerce in its early years, helped mobile businesses retarget their ads based on previous user activity. The service of Tap Commerce at the time of acquisition was also being used by Facebook.

Gnip

Twitter also acquired its long time data partner Gnip for $134 million in 2014. Gnip was among the first social media API aggregation service provider and had long provided access to public Twitter data. Apart from Twitter, Gnip was also offering API aggregation services to other social media networks like Reddit, Instagram Tumblr, Bitly and others.

TellApart

In its largest acquisition till then, Twitter paid $479 million for taking over the business of Adtech Startup TellApart. The acquisition was initially reported to cost $ 533 million but the deal was sealed at a $ 54 million lower price.

Magic Pony Technology

Twitter announced the acquisition of London-based Magic Pony Technology in 2016. The social media giant paid $150 million for the deal. Magic Pony Technology worked in the development of neural networks, a system that essentially is designed to think like the human brain. The technology could be used differently, for example, it could help in enhancing the quality of a picture or video taken on a low spec camera phone or also help to develop graphics for virtual reality or augmented reality applications.