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Earlier quoted context omitted.
...or not being in a market where no one knows how to make money. The best exits are for the companies that don't need to.
TweetDeck could make barrels of money if Twitter allowed them to run adverts. (of some capacity)
Are they still a relevant player in the field?
I'm betting on s/is/was/ very soon.
They went from having significant leverage and controlling a lot of tweeting marketshare...to losing all that.
A company that doesn't make money buys another company that doesn't make money. The Silicon Valley economy exists entirely on its own with no relation to the "real world".
What makes you think that Twitter isn't profitable, or at least has some incoming cash flow that isn't pumped in by VC or the secondary market?
TweetDeck is also the only mainstream Twitter client I could find that supports Identi.ca (and other federated Status.net derivatives). I'm betting on s/is/was/ very soon.
When they announced Twitter for Mac, they said:
"We acquired atebits with a focus on launching our own Twitter iPhone application. Since then, we’ve been asked repeatedly for a new version of Tweetie for Mac. We decided that the new version fits well into our goal of ensuring that mainstream users will have the best possible experience on popular platforms."
Mobile platforms may be the future, and an OS X client allows them to show off a bit and gain influential users, but the sheer size of the Windows user-base is not to be sniffed at.
Thoughts on whether Twitter will actually maintain Tweetdeck post-acquisition? For me, I have a feeling they will mothball it for three reasons: a) The aesthetic and visual approach of Tweetdeck doesn't fit in with the way Twitter wants its product used b) Twitter are looking to staff up a London office, it would make sense to use Tweetdeck (based in London) as that office (EDIT: the implication being that said staff…
There is no reason why Tweetdeck couldn't co-exist with Twitter's main clients. Twitter power users are the ones who tweet the most and innovate the most. Think of RT, # tags, pictures. Having a bleeding edge product keeps the power users happy without alienating the existing users by moving their cheese all the time.
A company that doesn't make money buys another company that doesn't make money. The Silicon Valley economy exists entirely on its own with no relation to the "real world".
Not only does Twitter make money, but TweetDeck raised it's first round of funding little over 2 years ago - it isn't ridiculous to spend that long building a product before monetization. No need to be so down on this.