Twitter Acquires Quill, Shutting Down Slack Rival

Twitter Acquires Quill, Signaling a Potential Shift in Messaging Strategy

Twitter, now under new leadership, has completed the acquisition of Quill, a messaging platform geared towards professional use. This move suggests a potential broadening of Twitter’s focus, moving beyond its traditional reliance on advertising revenue and public conversation.

Quill: A Challenger to Slack

Quill was designed to directly compete with established messaging services like Slack, with a core emphasis on focused communication. The financial details of the acquisition have not been publicly released. Prior to being acquired, Quill had secured approximately $16 million in funding from investors including Sam Altman and Index Ventures.

The company emerged from stealth mode earlier this year, in February. A key differentiator for Quill was its founder, Ludwig Pettersson, formerly the creative director at Stripe. Pettersson is highly regarded within the startup ecosystem.

Winding Down of the Quill Application

The Quill application itself will not continue operation following the acquisition. According to a Twitter spokesperson, the service is being discontinued. Users have been informed that they can export their message history until 1pm PST on Saturday, December 11th, 2021, after which servers will be shut down and all data deleted.

Full refunds will be issued to all currently active teams utilizing the Quill platform.

Integration into Twitter’s Messaging Infrastructure

However, the Quill team and its intellectual property are being integrated into Twitter. They will join Twitter’s Experience organization, specifically focusing on the development of messaging tools, including Twitter Direct Messages (DMs).

Ludwig Pettersson will assume the role of product manager, reporting to Oji Udezue within the Conversations team at Twitter.

The Future of Twitter Direct Messages

Twitter’s DMs have long been a subject of speculation among industry observers. Questions have arisen regarding the potential for DMs to evolve into a more independent product and revenue stream. This possibility gains traction considering the significant growth in messaging applications and the strategies of other social media platforms to enhance their direct messaging capabilities.

With Twitter actively pursuing diversification, this acquisition may represent an opportunity to reimagine and improve its DM functionality.

A Bold Attempt, Ultimately Absorbed

Quill’s ambition to provide a collaborative communication solution that prioritized focus over distraction was noteworthy. The company attempted to build and scale a new product to address this need.

However, gaining market share in the competitive messaging space would have presented substantial challenges, particularly given the dominance of well-established and financially robust competitors. The talented team assembled by Quill makes their future contributions within Twitter particularly interesting to observe.

The integration of Quill’s IP and personnel promises to be a significant development for Twitter’s messaging strategy.