Twitter has made yet another acquisition in Boston, this time snatching up Spindle, the local discovery app created by ex-NERD researchers. Spindle is essentially a mobile news and event feed targeted to your geography. Back in November, it raised $2.3 million from Polaris Ventures, Greylock Partners, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, Atlas Ventures, Broad Beach Ventures, and Project 11.
I’m hearing from a source that this is an acqui-hire. As part of the acquisition, the team is sunsetting the app and moving to San Franscisco to join the Twitter team there. The latter bit is somewhat strange, given that Twitter has chosen Boston as its East Coast headquarters, and is expanding here.
UPDATE: A separate source tells me the move to SF is motivated by the fact that Twitter’s social search engineering team is out there.
Earlier this year, Twitter bought both Crashlytics and Bluefin Labs which together now form its Boston presence.
It’s easy to imagine why Spindle would be of strategic value to Twitter — imagine opening up the Twitter mobile app and having a customized feed based on your location, your contacts, and your interests that shows you news, events, etc. going on around you.
Spindle had no revenue at the time of sale, according to a tweet by Atlas’s Fred Destin. If you know anything more about the deal, shoot me a note: walter at bostinno.
This post has been updated several times to include information from sources.
