Twitter has acquired another dotcom – this time business-oriented, low-distraction text/audio/video chat service Quill.chat. Neither company said how much cash changed hands.

[1]Quill.chat – no, not [2]that Quill – only [3]stuck its head above the parapet in April 2020 and launched on 23 February this year, so it may not be missed by all that many.

If you did use it and have anything you want to keep, you'd better be fast to grab your history – Quill [4]said yesterday that customers only have two days to export their data. At 1pm on Saturday 11 December, it's shutting down its servers and deleting everything. All part of the fun of PaaS and cloud computing.

[5]

To be honest, we are are losing count, but the deal looks to be Twitter's [6]66th acquisition so far and the fifth of 2021. As of October, Twitter had spent about [7]£750m buying other companies. It doesn't seem to have a lot to show for it; with [8]the exception of Tweetdeck , most are never seen or heard of again.

[9]Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey rebrands himself a 'single point of failure' and quits

[10]22-year-old Brit accused of Twitter SIM-swap heists charged with $784k cryptocurrency theft

[11]Twitter's machine learning algorithms amplify tweets from right-wing politicians over those on the left

[12]Australian PM and Deputy threaten Facebook and Twitter with defamation liability for users' posts

Quill billed itself as a less distracting, more focused and structured alternative to Slack – which itself has dozens of would-be competitors. Notable FOSS ones include [13]Rocket.chat , [14]Mattermost , and [15]Zulip .

Naturally, all the big software and social network vendors offer alternatives, too: [16]Microsoft has Teams (don't mention [17]Lync or [18]Skype for Business ), [19]Facebook has Workplace , and Google [20]has lots .

[21]

You could be forgiven for thinking that it would be easier for everyone if executives just learned to [22]use plain text email and a judicious [23]smattering of IRC . ®

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[1] https://quill.chat/

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/07/antique_code_show_doctor_who/?page=2

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22760155

[4] https://quill.chat/updates/2021-12-07-quill-twitter/

[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YbDkxpM8bodsosfM-1rYRAAAAJY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Twitter

[7] https://tracxn.com/d/acquisitions/acquisitionsbyTwitter

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2011/05/24/twitter_tweetdeck/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/29/jack_dorsey_resigns/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/04/joseph_oconnor_uscharges_sim_swap/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/25/twitters_political_bias/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/12/australia_social_media_defamation_push/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2016/03/17/no_slack_for_open_sourcers/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/05/mattermost_funding/

[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/28/zulip_open_source_chat_collaboration_software/

[16] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Microsoft%20Teams/

[17] https://www.theregister.com/2014/11/12/microsofts_lync_becomes_skype_for_business/

[18] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/31/skype_for_business_online_axe/

[19] https://www.theregister.com/2016/10/11/facebook_workplace

[20] https://www.theregister.com/2017/03/09/google_slack/

[21] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YbDkxpM8bodsosfM-1rYRAAAAJY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[22] https://useplaintext.email/

[23] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/01/freenode_issues_help_irc_grow/

[24] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/