Here’s an intriguing bit of tech acquisition news: Twitter is buying Crashlytics, the Cambridge, MA-based startup that helps software developers track down the bugs and errors that make their apps crash.
It’s no surprise that Twitter, one of the big dogs of the social media era, is out shopping for smaller companies. And it’s not a shock that Crashlytics got snapped up—the startup is aiming to solve a pervasive, sometimes difficult technical problem in a rapidly growing area of computing innovation. (In fact, Crashlytics made an acquisition of its own recently).
Here’s why we were kind of scratching our heads: It seems at first blush that Crashlytics’ suitor might be someone like Apple, Google, Amazon, or Microsoft—you know, a company with an app store.
There aren’t a lot of details on the deal just yet—Crashlytics made the announcement on its blog, and didn’t divulge the deal terms or other juicy tidbits. Co-founders Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang did say that “development of Crashlytics will continue unabated” and that the company would continue taking on customers.
With that kind of pledge, it doesn’t sound much like a “talent acquisition,” where a deeper-pocketed company like Twitter basically buys up some engineers and shuts down their old project.
Crashlytics raised $5 million in a Series A financing less than a year ago, from previous seed investors Flybridge Capital Partners and Baseline Ventures. At that point, the startup also said it had won notable customers including Path, Box, Domino’s, Expedia, ING Direct, Yammer, and Zillow.
I’ve emailed Chang and Seibert with some questions, but haven’t heard back yet. Twitter didn’t have anything to elaborate on the deal on its blog (which is not unusual). I’ll update if we hear any more.
In the meantime, it at least looks like we’ve got some Twitter blood to add to the tech DNA in the Boston area.
