Seesmic acquires Twhirl, will add videos to popular Twitter client

Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

Seesmic acquires Twhirl, will add videos to popular Twitter client

by Brad Linder Apr 4th 2008

Seesmic, which is in private beta, is basically a micro-video-blogging service, which allows users to record and share short videos and respond to videos from other users. Seesmic has often been described as Twitter for video chat. Today that comparison becomes a bit more apt, as Seesmic has acquired Twhirl, one of the most popular desktop clients for Twitter.

Twhirl is one of several Twitter clients built on Adobe AIR which use Twitter's API to essentially make a web-page based service feel more like an instant messaging client. You can run Twhirl as a desktop application on your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine. When new messages come in, you get an alert, and you can sort messages by replies, directs, or personal and public timelines. Twhirl also recently added the ability to repost messages to other micrblogging services like Jaiku and Pownce.

So what does this acquisition mean? First and foremost, Twhirl will be getting Seesmic video capabilities soon. As you can see from the screenshot to the right, video messages will show up in a timeline just like Twitter messages. Users will be able to click on a video message to open up a window that will play the video.

Second, so far Twhirl's creator Marco Kaiser has been developing Twhirl in his free time. Yet he's been able to build one of the most capable Twitter clients around. Now that he's working for Seesmic, Kaiser will be able to work on Twhirl full time. We can hardly wait to see the results.

Not surprisingly, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur decided to share his thoughts on the acquisition with a video. You can check it out after the jump.

Tags: acqusition, seesmic, twhirl, twitter

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