Twitter buys mobile-app maker Cabana

Twitter has made another acquisition to expand its app-development capabilities, the company confirmed in a tweet.

The company bought Cabana, a startup that provides technology to create mobile apps. Twitter likely made the acquisition in part to bulk up its staff focused on that area as Cabana's staff will be joining Twitter today, while its service will be shut down December 1.

Cabana said in a blog post that it will be working with Twitter's platform team "to build tools to help third-party developers create new experiences on Twitter and empower the larger Twitter ecosystem."

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but we've reached out to Twitter and will update if we get any more information.

Welcome to Twitter, @cabanaapp. cabanaapp.com/blog/cabana-is...

— Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) October 16, 2012

Cabana was founded by Reeve Thompson and Jeremy Gordon, and its staff comes from visual companies like Sega, Pixar, LucasArts, Adobe, and EA. Cabana notes on its site that the team "draws from a past of deep technical wizardry and merges it with [an] innovative and effective design." The site added that it takes a different approach to developing for the Web as it's used to working with GPUs and other graphic elements.

Some of the company's investors include First Round Capital, SV Angel, and Lerer Ventures, as well as Chris Sacca, and Dave Morin.

Here's the full blog post from Cabana:

Cabana is #JoiningTheFlock

Published on 2012-10-16 15:54:19

We are writing today with some exciting news: Cabana has been acquired by Twitter and our team is #JoiningTheFlock!

We built Cabana because we are passionate about empowering people to develop interactive content in new and innovative ways. That same passion for innovation and the democratization of content creation is also shared by the amazing team at Twitter.

Over the past few months, we've gotten to know the Twitter team and discovered the tremendous amount of technological synergy and alignment of our visions. The more we explored this synergy, the more excited we became about joining forces and working together.

Starting today we will be joining Twitter's platform team, and will build tools to help third-party developers create new experiences on Twitter and empower the larger Twitter ecosystem.

This means that we will no longer be offering Cabana as a standalone mobile app development environment.

Cabana will be shutting down on December 1st 2012. If you have any questions about our rolldown, please email us at rolldown@cabanaapp.com.

Rest assured that the ideas and passion behind Cabana will live on, albeit in a slightly different form -- at Twitter!

We want to thank all of you, from our users and investors to our family and friends, who made this journey possible.

We're excited for what the future with Twitter holds!