

Twitter acquires Crashlytics - jamesjyu
http://www.crashlytics.com/blog/crashlytics-is-joining-forces-with-twitter/

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noahmbarr
IMO, this acquisition could have been motivated by 1 or more of the following:

(1) Need them in house. Many larger companies have been contracting their app
development to ISVs. Some ISVs have been quietly purchased by their largest
customers, as mobile has become more "core". Crashlytics was a toolmaker that
Twitter and some others used. Perhaps, Twitter thought these tools were
"core", or too important to not have as part of their org.

 __ __I'd argue this isn't the primary motivator. Twitter could have
benefited, and would arguably benefit more, if Crashlytics continued their
mission external to Twitter as a straight crash diagnostic solution. If
Twitter asked for something cool, Crashlytic would generally jump at the
chance to deliver the functionality [w/ no acquistion]. From Crashlytic's
perspective, assuming they ran a tight/"well attended" acquisition process, I
would hypothesize a higher value from some one like Google (for dev tool for
all their publishers + #3 upside + compliment to GA), and/or someone like
NetDynamics/NewRelic/EMC. The APM people will eventually see the light,
realizing they, too, can't afford NOT to have a mobile offering to their
product offering (Facebook is to Instagram as …) __ __

(2) Talent. Crashlytics has always had a competency in UI/UX + hardcore mobile
engineering. Remember, they are toolmakers, the hard core of the hard core.
These skills would be valuable to any company with a significant mobile
presence. The UI/UX talent would benefit anyone.

 __ __Given the probable purchase price, anchored by their last round of
funding (~$5-6M), pure talent motivations are unlikely due to investor return
expectations driving high PP. If competitors had so drastically reduced
Crashlytics ability to grow into a standalone business, then this might be a
possibility. Even then, there are organizations who they could find to more
highly value their particular skillets / current product __ __*

(3) Re-purpose / Trojan horse. Since Crashlytics solution installs an agent
inside someone's else app, you can begin delivering all types of services +
collect all kinds of interesting info as part of a bundled offering: \- (3A)
Event logging. Call this the Flurry/GoogleAnalytics play. Every time an
instrumented app does something, speaks to the outside world, or most likely,
a user takes a certain set of actions, the SDK can report to the mothership.
This is particularly useful if you're looking to add tracking across Twitter
properties (app, web, etc) and other apps. \- (3B) Social plumbing. Twitter
might lost-lead this (give it a way for free) to make adding twitter
functionality into any app very easy. \- (3C) Mobile infrastructure wedge.
Secure a relationship with app developers, and do something more beneficial
with those relationships than just selling them tooling. Burstly/Testflight is
a good example, so is Flurry with advertising. \- (3D) Other. God only knows.

 __ __3A/3B/3C are a very likely. The "universal cookie" is the holly grail
for advertising platforms, and no one has figured it out yet. I would argue
Google is better situated to take this role (given control over ad network
+leading mobile OS), but can't fault Twitter for trying. You could argue they
are making the advertising platform move. If this is the move, they run the
risk of alienating their relationships / running a cat/mouse game with the
mobile OS platform owners __ __

\------------------------------------ So in summary, I'm going with mostly #3,
with 1 & 2 as a secondary motivator. Whichever is the case, I'd keep a close
eye on their ToS (the hips don't lie). #3 is scary every which way, for both
consumers and app dev's. #3 is aggressive, and loaded with cat/mouse games
from existing platforms. #3 is thinking big.

How does this play for the remaining players in the space? Either very good or
very bad for Crittercism, uTest's Apphance, and Bugsense.

\- Bad. There was always a high probability of mobile crash reporting becoming
commoditized, and/or becoming a lost-leader for something else. I highly doubt
Crashlyitcs is going to remain Twitter's gift to the mobile engineering
organizations of the world (a 2nd Bootstrap of sorts)?

\- Good. Competitors lost a very credible competitor today. The information
and access Twitter would gain via an embedded monitoring agent inside lots of
popular apps is very interesting. For example, Twitter would know coveted
metrics like real-time MAU #'s for any app using Crashlytics SDK. There's a
hypothesis that companies will pay for tooling, especially if they know and
can control how the data will be used. This is only magnified, if the new
owner has large incentives to misuse that information.
\------------------------------------

[I was an early employee at a competitor. I left to join a new startup ~5
months ago]

~~~
inthewoods
I don't see how it works as a Trojan horse. I don't think it plays - all the
apps using Crashlytics will switch to a different service rather than have
their data flow to Twitter. No way Expedia wants their data flowing to Twitter
(or anyone else).

Looks to me like a talent acquisition. While Crashlytics was likely popular, I
think they likely had limited revenue opportunities given Hockey App and
Crittercism.

Really - it's a race to the bottom on these crash services. Switching costs
would seem to be pretty low - so my guess is that the VCs saw a quick out.

Congrats to the team for the acquisition.

~~~
saddino
I agree. We were an early Crashlytics adopter that also used TestFlight for Ad
Hoc testing. When TestFlight launched TestFlight Live and introduced its own
crash logging service, we saw no need to keep both in the app and shut off
Crashlytics. Anecdotal of course, but I think the theory here has merit: crash
logging is a feature, not a business model, and the Crashlytics team made a
good move here.

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upthepunx
This is likely about Twitter getting creepy. Every online advertising company
is worried about the growth of the mobile environment, because it's harder to
do all of the tracking that they're used to on those platforms. There are no
cookies that follow you across apps.

The cookie equivalent in the mobile world is the SDK. Rather than scattering
your "like"/"tweet"/"follow" buttons all over the web to track users'
movements, you embed your SDK into everyone's apps to do the same thing.

If you are currently a Crashlytics customer, think about how much information
is being transmitted to Crashlytics from your app, and what Twitter is going
to be able to do with that now.

~~~
loceng
Interesting thought. Any idea how many apps use Crashlytics? There's lots of
value in knowing what potential competitor numbers are or even for other
strategic reasons.

~~~
fsiaf
We use crashlytics for all our apps at App Camelot <http://appcamelot.com>

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jazzychad
Pure speculation: This fits in well with other sdk platforms that complete the
loop for advertising companies focused on mobile. Burstly (mobile ads) bought
TestFlight (beta app distribution sdk). Flurry (mobile ads) gives away a free
analytics sdk (Flurry Analytics). Now Twitter (ad company) has Crashlytics
(crash reporting sdk). In each case, the free offering is a trojan horse to
get insight into tons of aggregate data in order to power the
advertising/recommendation engines of the parent company.

The only way I can see that this makes sense is if Twitter is going to become
a web/mobile-wide ad company and start offering ad units across the web and/or
other apps (like AdSense but with tweets as the ad unit).

There could be dozens of different/better reasons that this makes sense, but I
can't see them at the moment.

~~~
inthewoods
Or it could just be a talent acquisition. :)

Per my post above, I don't see how any company using Crashlytics continues to
use them going forward. If you are a publisher, the last thing you'd want is
Twitter having your data.

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andrewhillman
This looks like the Google Urchin deal (2005) which became Google Analytics.
Google got its hooks into every web page/site with the Urchin deal. I guess
Twitter is looking to do the same on mobile via Crashlytics. Good move.

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monatron
Crashlytics was never really on my radar until today, but I'm really impressed
by their design work. Really great stuff.

~~~
zmitri
Crashlytics has literally changed the game with regards to crash reporting.
Their UI and customer service has been wonderful (unlike most other mobile
service providers...) and I really hope they continue to offer their services
to devs.

~~~
pifflesnort
They're very big on polish and claiming to be awesome, but it's all smoke and
mirrors and gamesmanship.

Drill down on a crash for example:
[https://d1f4seebrc9wq7.cloudfront.net/blog/wp-
content/upload...](https://d1f4seebrc9wq7.cloudfront.net/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/02.41.png)

All the information provided at the top is done with great attention to
beautifully rendered icons, and it's all totally useless for diagnosing a
crash report.

This is supposed to be a development tool, not an advertisement.

~~~
zmitri
Have you used crashlytics before?

I use it in production with an app that has >50K users. It shows you the exact
lines, and break down where it happens. What you showed isn't even important.

~~~
pifflesnort
> _It shows you the exact lines, and break down where it happens._

So they support DWARF and backtraces. Just like everyone else.

> _What you showed isn't even important._

Yes, exactly.

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benatkin
I didn't see the part about twitter turning into a multiple-product company.
They've kept Posterous alive but besides that, just about anything they've
acquired has been rolled into their core product or dismantled. I'd welcome
the change, but I really don't know whether to believe the part about
Crashlytics continuing unabated.

~~~
objclxt
It is an interesting acquisition - clearly, Twitter has a lot of use for the
product internally, and they were probably one of, if not _the_ biggest,
client (in terms of raw data collected). There is something to be said for
mitigating the risk that your third party suppliers disappear from under your
feet.

I don't know what Crashlytics enterprise pricing structure is like, but if
it's anything like other similar services they'll probably be on twelve month
agreements with their clients, which would be complex to untie. I doubt the
service will go anywhere for _paying clients_ for a little while. If you're
relying on a free third-party service in your apps you always have a recovery
plan should something get bought, retired, or just plain go wrong.

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rdl
Is there a list of other Twitter acquisitions, and how they've turned out
(i.e. product vs. talent, and whether products were kept independent vs.
rolled into Twitter)? I haven't really seen much about them as an acquirer vs.
Facebook or Google, but that might just be my focus.

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nileshbhojani
Not a bad thing if this is going to reduce the number of time Twitter crashes
:-).

Not so good for the current clients of Crashytics though. Are the other
tools/services that provide good crash analytics?

~~~
robkwok
Have you checked out Crittercism? <http://www.crittercism.com> :)

~~~
luxiou
crittercism has prevented us from losing about $150K worth of users.

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MaxGabriel
Will Crashlytics continue to sponsor NSMeetup?

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rf45
I think they will connect web+mobile+TV analytics for advertisers and this
will be huge if they will succede.

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mayop100
Congrats to Jeff and the team!

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erickhill
TestFlight should be on Twitter's short list, too.

~~~
jazzychad
Burstly acquired TestFlight in Q4 2011.

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erickhill
To be honest I did not know that. However, I do wish (quite often) that Apple
would acquire TestFlight and make the service more stable. Can't live without
it. But I suppose now Burstly must be on Twitter's radar, too.

~~~
apl002
I would love apple to acquire test flight. I think it sucks and not user
friendly at all. However, I cant live without it

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meh01
Anyone know why?

