Twitter Acquires Design Agency Ueno

Twitter has acquired Ueno, a design agency, a blog post from company CEO and Founder Haraldur Thorleifsson stated.

Thorleifsson said in the post that the company, which was founded in late 2013, first worked with Twitter in 2019, when a friend of his, Dantley Davis, who worked at Twitter, contacted him for help.

“The next few months we worked to help establish a new vision and product strategy for one of the cornerstone teams at Twitter,” Thorleifsson said in the post. “After some early hiccups the project became a huge success. So much so that a few hours after the executive review I got another DM from Dantley. This time asking if we would consider joining Twitter.”

After that, Ueno and Twitter continued to work on projects “on a number of new streams helping their product and brand teams,” according to the post.

Thorleifsson said in the post that the pandemic has affected Ueno, and that layoffs happened. He wrote that over the course of the past several months, his conversation with his friend evolved into eventually just asking about merging with the social media giant.

In joining with Twitter, Thorleifsson said he’s “proud we are able to leave on a high note. I feel like we won the agency game and there were no more things to prove. No more worlds to conquer,” according to the post.

This isn’t the only acquisition Twitter has made recently. Earlier this week, the company announced its purchase of podcast app Breaker. The app is set to shut down Jan. 15 as the founders make their move to work with Twitter on how it’s facilitating public conversations globally.

Breaker’s founders said the world of podcast-hosting apps had grown so substantially in the time since it was formed four years ago that users likely wouldn’t have a hard time finding a better alternative.

In addition, Twitter bought Squad, an app used to share screens between friends and hang out virtually — a service likely used more since the pandemic began.