TWITTER HAS bought TweetDeck, a London-based company which gives its users a real-time platform to organise how they read, write and follow Twitter messages, according to a message posted on its blog today.

Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, said that the TweetDeck acquisition marked an “important step”:

TweetDeck is a great example of a third-party developer that designed tools for the incredibly important audience of Twitter power-users and, in turn, created value for the network as a whole.

TweetDeck found Iain Dodsworth said in his company blog that he was “extremely happy and proud” to announce the acquisition and describing the three years since he started TweetDeck as “an epic journey, with many highs and lows”.

He said his team would remain in London with the same focus, but with “the support and resources to allow us to grow and take on even bigger challenges”.

Neither company has released details of the acquisition terms, but speculation ahead of the deal suggested that Twitter would pay up to $50m (€35.4m) for TweetDeck.

- Additional reporting by the AP