tweetchat

Since the day an ominous message appeared across the top of TweetChat.com — “Twitter is changing the way services like @TweetChat deliver data to users. In the very near future, TweetChat will most likely be unable to continue to provide our service.” — IML has been in talks with Brooks Bennett, the creator of the beloved platform, to acquire it and make sure the site lives on.

Make no mistake — Brooks didn’t set out to sell the site. It was a labor of love, but the continuous changes to Twitter’s API meant continuous platform updates. And the sunsetting of the existing Twitter API meant the site as it is now would cease to work on June 11.

“There have always been requests to take the concept to the next level, and I am excited for the role OneQube’s SmartStream will play in filling this gap,” said Brooks, who agreed to sell the site to Internet Media Labs with the understanding that the application would be shut down and community migrated to oneQube #SmartStream. Brooks also is joining Internet Media Labs’ advisory board.

TweetChat was born four and a half years ago, after Brooks spoke at a public relations boot camp.

“I noticed many people at the camp getting excited about Twitter and social tools in general,” he told me. “Most people were creating their accounts and then would sit and stare at the screen thinking, ‘Now what?’ These folks were interested first and foremost in topics, not necessarily in specific people.”

Hashtags had come into use on Twitter in 2007 and while they had caught on, they were still rather niche.

“The hashtag was a new tool that folks were using, so I thought it would be cool to connect people in real-time around hashtags,” Brooks said. “The conference was on a Friday, so I spent the weekend putting a prototype together and presented it early the next week to my friends at Dorkbot Austin.”

It was love at first sight for many. I recall seeing Sarah Evans’ #journchat zipping through my TweetDeck in 2008 and wondering how the heck all these people participating were able to follow the conversation so easily. I asked a friend and he said, “Go to TweetChat.com and put in the hashtag.

Image courtesy of internetmedialabs.com