This is today’s big news: with an official blog post, Twitter has announced the acquisition of Atebits’ Tweetie 2 for iPhone.
From the press release:
“We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren’s work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.”
And there you have it guys. As I’ve just said on Twitter, we at MacStories won’t write our take on this until further details ( Tweetie for Mac, for example) come in. What we know for sure, it’s that when an indie app is acquired by “the mothership”, it usually gets screwed up. We’ll see.
Congratulations Loren, enjoy your new job.