Twitter buys Seattle startup, second purchase this month

Twitter announced Friday that it had bought Cloudhopper, a small SMS technology company, in the second acquisition by the popular micro-blogging service this month.

The Seattle-based Cloudhopper is a messaging infrastructure firm that helps Twitter connect directly to mobile carrier networks around the world, Twitter said in a blog post.

Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

While Twitter is most often accessed from Internet-enabled mobile devices or computers, the San Francisco-based company recalled that its origins as a message service of 140 characters or less came from SMS text messaging.

Twitter said it had already been working with Cloudhopper "to become one of the highest volume SMS programs in the world."

"Twitter processes close to a billion SMS tweets per month and that number is growing around the world from Indonesia to Australia, the UK, the US, and beyond," Twitter said.

Cloudhopper, founded in 2008, is a two-person operation.

Earlier this month, Twitter announced the acquisition of Atebits, a company that developed an iPhone program for Twitter.

Revealing user numbers for the first time since it launched in March 2006, Twitter said last week that it has topped 105 million registered users and is adding 300,000 new accounts a day.

(c) 2010 AFP