Twitter acquires community podcast developer Breaker
Twitter has acquired the team behind Breaker, a "community" app for finding and listening to podcasts.
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You might have a handful of artists or podcast producers that you tune in to on a frequent basis, but the idea behind Breaker was to bring a social element to podcast discovery.
The platform provided access to over half a million podcasts and allowed users to like, comment on, and share content they enjoyed, as well as see what their friends were listening to via both an Android and iOS mobile app.
However, Breaker is soon to be closed, with the team behind the app -- Erik Berlin, Leah Culver, and Emma Lundin -- set to join Twitter's engineering unit.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The deal was made public on January 4 by Twitter's engineering lead Michael Montano. In a tweet, Montano said, "Erik and Leah have founded and sold startups previously and will bring an entrepreneurial spirit to our engineering org[anization]," and "will share their experiences in the space to improve the health of public conversation on our service."
While a podcast-related app might not have seemed like a natural fit for Twitter several years ago -- despite the platform launching as a spin-out from a podcast company -- according to a tweet published by Culver, the team is destined to help develop Twitter's Spaces product, an audio product for live chat sessions.
Currently in a small beta testing phase, Spaces allows users to create a 'Space,' in which the creator can host a session and followers are able to join, listen in, and potentially contribute -- with voice rights controlled by the host.
"While I'll very much miss [Breaker], I'm so excited to help create the future of audio conversations," Culver said.
In an accompanying Medium blog post, the Breaker developers said the app will be closed down on January 15 in order to permit the team to "focus on building what comes next."
"We believe podcasting has a bright future, and we were grateful to have the opportunity to play a small part in it," the team added. "We're impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit at Twitter and enthusiastic about the new experiences that the team is creating."
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