A small but interesting acquisition for Twitter as it continues to hone the services that it delivers to brands and other would-be advertisers alongside its core microblogging service: it has bought Nclud, a Washington, DC-based web design agency for an undisclosed amount.
The deal was announced by co-founder and director of brand experience Martin Ringlein, appropriately enough, on Twitter (where he tweets as @martymadrid): “It’s true … @nclud was acquired. As of today, I am the new Design Manager at Twitter!!” he wrote on Sunday.
Update: A Twitter spokeperson notes that in fact it has not bought the whole company, but it has bought the company’s IP, and that some of the staff are joining: “I can confirm that some members of the nclud team now work at Twitter,” he wrote in an email. “Twitter did not acquire nclud, the company, but we did acquire their IP.” He did not provide the financial terms of the deal.
Things are moving fast. Today, Ringlein noted that he was filling out paperwork for his first day at work.
We’ve reached out to Twitter and Nclud to try to get some more color on the deal, but the acquisition makes sense as Twitter continues to mature and look both for ways of servicing advertisers — and its own customer base — with compelling design on different platforms.
Nclud up to now has mainly been an advertising and marketing design agency, with its team working on a number of projects for both web and mobile screens. They include various projects for Oracle, such as its iPhone app, Ogilvy PR’s website and Politico’s iPhone app.
If Twitter continues this line of business, this could mean the company itself branching out into more traditional web advertising work. But if this is an aqui-hire situation, then it will be about using the talent on the staff (12 if you include the two cute dogs) to enhance what Twitter is doing.
Twitter has been on a bit of a buying spree, moster recently picking up Posterous in March. We’ll update this post as we learn more.