Twitter Aquires Whisper Systems

[tptacek]

Maybe Twitter is doing something involving payments? But if they were, I wonder if they'd telegraph it so blatantly.

The words "talent acquisition" are so cynical, so I'm embarrassed that they'd be my first reaction to this.

Maybe another interesting question is: why is it so hard to get a successful device security product off the ground for Android? Is the market need not there?

[marshray]

Another possibility is that they want Moxie to work on Convergence full-time.

This could represent Twitter and Google ganging up on the CAB Forum to clean up their act for the good of the internet. Alternatively, it may be that Twitter plans to match Google's scheme to be an end user identity provider by moving some of the publishing directly onto the handset, and for this they might want a more decentralized server authentication environment.

[mike-cardwell]

I can understand the talent acquisition, but it's strange to see Whisper Systems products owned by Twitter, considering their purpose...

I could imagine Whisper Systems developing an app to encrypt tweets. I can't imagine Twitter doing that.

[nuclearsandwich]

One of the things Whisper had was a method of encrypting SMS messages so they still fit in an SMS message, perhaps Twitter is hoping to take advantage of that?

[pajju]

I don't see this as a talent acquisition.

Waiting for someone to shed more light on this acquisition.

[siavosh]

Maybe they want to create an enterprise offering (like Yammer).

[samstave]

This is in line with Square perhaps we will see "Pay-by-tweet" with a secure encrypted tweet coming along.

With wrapper apps around this.

[grumblepeet]

A hardened Android stack? Maybe Twitter are developing a phone?

[hello_moto]

Either that or someone knows someone and would like to have a "successful investment" wink wink.

Too early to say though.