Twitter buys We Are Hunted, shuts down services

After weeks of speculation, We Are Hunted has confirmed that it has indeed been acquired by Twitter.

As part of the acquisition, the Brisbane, Australia-founded startup announced that it is shutting down its existing services and closing user accounts. Its core function was to monitor various social media outlets and determine what artists and songs were trending at the time.

It hasn't provided a date that its complete shutdown will occur, but new sign-ups to the service appear to have been halted, and it has provided a form for existing customers to retrieve existing data.

We Are Hunted does not specifically mention that it will be working on the rumoured Twitter Music, writing, "We wish we could say [what we're working on], but we're not yet ready to talk about it". However, just prior to announcing the acquisition on Twitter, the startup, as well as @TwitterMusic, retweeted US TV and radio personality Ryan Seacrest's claims that Twitter's "new music app" was real and that he had access to it.

playing with @twitter's new music app (yes it's real!)...there's a serious dance party happening at idol right now

— Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest) April 11, 2013

Twitter has a policy of not commenting on rumours or speculation, and while its local Australian representatives were able to confirm Twitter's acquisition of We Are Hunted, they could not confirm or deny the startup's involvement with Twitter Music, or if the latter even exists.

Twitter's acquisition of We Are Hunted continues a string of purchases that the social media company has made recently.

In January last year, it purchased Canada-based social aggregator Summify, which focuses on news. A few months before that in November, it also acquired Whisper Systems, a security company focusing on mobile device security. Like these two former acquisitions, Twitter has not disclosed a price for the We Are Hunted deal.