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Atebits, the company that makes the popular iPhone and desktop Twitter app Tweetie, has just been acquired by Twitter. The really good news for the public is that Twitter intends to offer the app for free, which it plans to rename Twitter for iPhone. We all like free things, right? Not to mention that we’ll finally get a Twitter app for the iPad, too.

I do wonder when other mobile operating systems will get an official app as well, since Twitter has already helped create an official BlackBerry app and Tweetie will let them cover the iPhone market.

Twitter, which has flourished thanks to tools built by outside developers, is taking more of those tools under its own wing.
This marks a new strategy, as Twitter makes its first foray into providing a mobile and desktop client itself. On Friday, Twitter also announced that it helped Research in Motion build an “official” Twitter app for BlackBerrys.

In the past, Twitter has focused on its Web site, twitter.com, and left the development of Twitter mobile clients up to start-ups like Tweetie, Twitterrific and UberTwitter.

Source: New York Times.