Crashlytics, the Boston-based crash reporting solution for iOS apps is moving on up – from independent startup to the newest wrench in Twitter’s tool box. The announcement was made Monday on Crashlytic’s blog and quickly circulated the Web.
Was This A Man-quisition?
The service, which debuted in late 2011, has quickly become known as a useful tool for app developers looking for a streamlined method to find the root cause of product bugs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it could represent a major payday for co-founders Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang. It’s not yet clear if Twitter is interested in the Crashlytics product line, or just its engineering talent in an acquihire.
“With us, developers gain instant visibility into the precise line of code that caused a crash, enabling them to more easily fix issues,” Seibert and Chang wrote in their announcement Monday. “Since our iOS launch, we’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of incredible app developers, from those building independent passion-projects to many of the top iOS apps available today – Twitter, Vine, Yelp, Kayak, TaskRabbit, and Waze.”
Now What?
Coming on the heels of the Vine acquisition, it’s likely that this will be the newest addition to the Twitter family continuing to operate as a third-party service, post-purchase.
In their post, Seibert and Chang wrote “much will remain the same. Development of Crashlytics will continue unabated and we remain dedicated to working with all of our customers – current and new, big and small – to deliver the key app performance insights they need.”
So why did Twitter make the deal? “It seems like a strategy to grow the mobile team,” says Jad Meouchy, a mobile app developer in Los Angeles, and co-founder of Osurv, a custom mobile survey app. “It looks like a straight talent acquisition.” But Meouchy also calls Crashlytics a strong and mature mobile additive that gives Twitter “the people they need to start making their own mobile apps.”
Spencer Chen, the senior director of business development at Appcelerator agrees that this is a strategic move by Twitter to expand their offerings.
“I believe Twitter is going to take the extension of their service onto mobile and devices very seriously by coming out with their version of a mobile SDK (software development kit), which will include key features that every developer wants, crash test reporting via Crashlytics,” he said. “Right now Twitter pushes everything out via their APIs, which is all backend services. If they had a real mobile SDK, then they can really optimize development productivity and mobile performance by having certain capabilities into the third mobile (and) device apps itself.”
With Vine, Twitter’s planted its flag in the ground to announce its plans to conquer mobile social video. Could Monday’s Crashlytics move be the beginning of a new era for Twitter mobile app development? And a tool to help address problems with Vine?
We’ll know soon enough.
Photo courtesy of Twitter.
