Under a new CEO, Twitter’s made an acquisition that speaks to what it might be looking at developing down the line to diversify away further from ad-based, open-ended, consumer chatter. It has acquired Quill, a business-focused messaging service meant to compete against the likes of Slack and keep people, well, more focused.
Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Quill had raised around $16 million from backers that included Sam Altman and Index Ventures and it came out of stealth in February of this year. One of its biggest selling points — apart from being bold enough to speak out about the shortcomings of Slack and to try to build something to compete against its juggernaut-like momentum of growth that has been boosted by it getting acquired by Salesforce — was that it was founded by Ludwig Pettersson, the former creative director of Stripe, who is much admired by many