Twitter Acquires Quill, Intentions To Turn DM Into An Independent Application?

Twitter has reportedly acquired Quill, a messaging app. (photo: doc. twitter)

JAKARTA - Under the new leadership of CEO Parag Agrawal, Twitter has reportedly acquired Quill, a messaging app with the aim of improving the company's messaging services, including direct messaging (DM).

General manager for Into technology at Twitter, Nick Cladwell described Quill in a tweet as a fresher, more deliberate way of communicating. Most likely, the company will create an ad-based standalone messaging app.

"We're bringing their experience and creativity to Twitter as we work to make messaging tools like DMs more useful and expressive ways for people to have conversations on the service," Cladwell tweeted.

.@ludwig and his talented team built Quill as a fresher, more deliberate way to communicate. We're bringing their experience and creativity to Twitter as we work to make messaging tools like DMs a more useful & expressive way people can have conversations on the service.

— Nick Caldwell🔪🧼 (@nickcald) December 7, 2021

Quoting The Verge, Wednesday, December 8, this acquisition will result in Quill's service being shut down, but the team will join the Experience division on Twitter. However, the full terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As the Quill service will be shutting down, the company via its official website provides information for users wishing to export their team's message history, which will be available until 13:00 PT (04:00 WIB) on December 11.

After crossing the set limit, Quill will shut down its server and delete all data. Active customers will also be given a full refund.

"Together with Twitter, we will continue to pursue our original goal - to make online communication wiser, and more effective, for everyone," Quill wrote on his website.

For information, Quill made its official launch in February. They call themselves "a message for people who are focused." The company was founded by Ludwig Pettersson, former creative director of payment processing platform Stripe. Pettersson himself will be joining the Twitter Conversations team under Oji Udezue.

DMs have long been a concern for some, and they wonder when and if Twitter will seek to develop them into a more independent product and possible line of business.

Given the huge boom that has been seen in messaging apps in recent years, and the many other open social media platforms to increase their own direct messaging business. Like Facebook for example with Messenger.

Now, with Twitter making more steps to diversify its business, it's likely that this could be an opportunity to rethink DM into a standalone app.