Twitter inks acquisition (and shutdown) of Quill

The writing was on the wall for startup Quill, at least as far as Twitter was concerned.

For an undisclosed sum, Twitter has acquired the online messaging and work collaboration tool for businesses, and will shut down the app on December 11 (1PM PST to be precise). Full refunds are promised for active accounts. Twitter intends to pick the brains (and IP) of the Quill team and – according to various news outlets – will likely try and develop the DM side of its operations, perhaps even creating a standalone messaging app business.

Figure 1: Birds of a feather: The social media giant will tap the know-how and IP of self-styled Slack rival Quill.
(Source: Quill)

"We're thrilled to have them onboard and can't wait to see what we accomplish together," tweeted Nick Caldwell, Twitter's GM of core tech. In a similar vein, a brief statement from Quill – posted on Twitter – informed readers it "can't wait to show you what we'll be working on next."

Get Slack

In the past Quill has made no bones about its ambition to compete with (and better) Slack, a work collaboration app which CRM specialist Salesforce acquired for a blockbuster £27.7 billion in July.

Audaciously, shortly after its commercial launch in February, Quill happily informed Slack users of a new import function. "If you've previously used Slack, you can now transfer all your content – messages, threads, files, channels – and instantly bring your team to Quill," the company said in a post.

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According to TechCrunch, Quill has raised around $16 million. Backers include tech entrepreneur Sam Altman and Index Ventures. Ludwig Pettersson, formerly creative director at Stripe, an online and mobile payments business, founded Quill in 2017 when still in his mid-20s.

"We started Quill to increase the quality of human communication," tweeted the young Swede. "Excited to keep doing just that at @Twitter."

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— Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading