In preparation for a ramp up of its monetization efforts and its first beta phase of self serve ads, Twitter has bought security startup Dasient, which specializes in malware and fighting spam. The team will be integrated into “revenue engineering,” a.k.a the ad product team under directors Kevin Weil and Alex Roetter.
From the Dasient blog:
“Since its inception, Dasient has been focused on solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse. In 2009, Dasient launched its web anti-malware platform, capable of scanning URLs and websites for the presence of harmful content. In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads. Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry’s largest ad networks and web sites.”
Twitter advertising’s most likely use of a full staff trained in anti-spam and anti-malware strategy is to protect a product (like Twitter’s self-serve ads for example) from fraud and attempts at abuse. It was a large acquisition according to sources, in terms of sheer size of the team.
The last acquisition Twitter “revenue engineering” made was AdGrok, back in June, and curation tool Summify just got snapped up by a different Twitter department last week. Dasient itself was founded by Googlers Neil Daswani, Ameet Ranadive and Shariq Rizvi and backed by over $4 million from Google Ventures, Benhamou Global Ventures, Floodgate, Radar Partners and others pre-acquisition.