Twitter announced it has acquired blogging and sharing platform Posterous in what appears to be an acquisition of talent. No details about the acquisition were released but Posterous Spaces will remain up and running for the time being though it’s unclear how long that will last.
On its blog, Twitter said it will put Posterous’s engineers and product managers to work on several initiatives that will make Twitter even better. Twitter stressed the talent it has acquired and said it will give Posterous users plenty of warning if it makes any service changes. Twitter will release instructions soon that allows users to back up or export their Posterous content.
Posterous founder Sachin Argawal explained the sale in a blog post as a chance to bring the Posterous team’s expertise to Twitter, which has more than 100 million active users. “The last four years have been an amazing journey. Your encouragement, praise and criticism have made us better. Thanks for that. We look forward to building great things for you over at Twitter,” Argawal wrote.
Now, it’s not an admission that Posterous will be shuttered. But it sounds like the Posterous team will be occupied more with making Twitter better, than keep Posterous up and running.
The acquisition means an even larger workforce for Twitter, which has been on a hiring spree. Headcount has doubled from 450 in mid 2011 to nearly 900, according to a recent report in Gawker. It’s unclear how the Posterous team will make Twitter more profitable. The micro-blogging service, which had raised $ 10 million from Y Combinator, Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jafco Ventures, had 15 million users as of last September but had been long since past by rival Tumblr, which is now serving 120 million users. Jumping into the arms of Twitter may be a good consolation prize for a Posterous, similar to how Gowalla’s team got bought out by Facebook. Without a clear path to beating Tumblr, it might make more sense to just join a rising power in Twitter.
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