Twitter ad platform and search engine TweetUp has acquired popular Android Twitter client Twidroid, as well as RSS news aggregator Popurls, the company announced today.
Popurls is somewhat of an old-school service, displaying a number of hand-picked technology related RSS feeds from sites like Digg and Reddit, as well as a number of popular blogs. Although it’s less customizable than a full-fledged RSS reader such as Google Reader, its simple yet effective approach turned it into a popular tech-related destination. Combined with the acquisition of Twidroid (which will now be called Twidroyd to avoid lawsuits from Lucas Films, who owns the trademark for the term “droid”), TweetUp hopes to “refine its platform for finding the world’s best tweeters.”
“Twidroyd is widely considered the best Twitter client for Android phones and it leads in market share, so its growing base of users will be a valuable source of well-informed feedback on TweetUp search on mobile devices. In addition, the popurls website, which attracts users looking for a convenient guide to the most popular sites, news, videos and blogs on the Internet, will be a natural spot to display TweetUp search results and gain user feedback,” said Bill Gross, CEO of TweetUp.
Both Twidroyd and Popurls were founded by Austrian entrepreneur Thomas Marban. “With their resources and experience along with the bundling deals we have developed with a number of the leading device manufacturers, we believe Twidroyd can widen its lead as the top Android client for Twitter users and aggressively grow our distribution while taking advantage of TweetUp’s business model for uncovering the best tweeters on topics of interest to our users,” said Marban.
The most interesting part of the announcement is definitely the bit that claims Twidroyd “will come standard on millions of upcoming Android phones from five of the leading handset manufacturers.” If TweetUp indeed managed to land a deal to have Twidroyd preloaded on Android phones, it would be a huge boost for them, but what of Twitter’s official Android app, then?
