Twitter has acquired “Values of n,” a company founded by Rael Dornfest, former CTO of O’Reilly Media. Dornfest is known for being a pioneer in RSS and editing O’Reilly’s Hack books.
“A short while ago it became clear to Rael that while the innovative personal productivity and information management applications his startup had created were useful products with a loyal following, Values of n was not going to meet its huge expectations as a standalone business,” explains Twitter CEO Evan Williams. “As an early user, Rael has long been fascinated with Twitter and the unique challenges it presents. He started a conversation with us about how we might work together—and we recognized an amazing opportunity.”
That opportunity turned into Twitter’s acquisition of Value of n’s assets including a sticky-note app and a personal productivity app that is compatible with email, SMS, and the web. Williams notes that Dornfest is already working as a full time Twitter engineer as well. For a litte more info on Values of n, the about page reveals how Dornfest views the company:
We always strive to move beyond software that’s “cool” or feature-full to software that’s transparent and feature-useful: software so elegantly implemented it becomes an extension of the person using it.
You’ll see all of this at work in our products, Stikkit: Little yellow notes that think, and I want Sandy — Your personal email assistant.
Williams says that Values of n’s existing products will be terminated, but the technology behind them will “re-emerge” as part of Twitter’s own properties. It will certainly be interesting to see what upgrades Twitter gets as a result of this acquisition. Financial terms of the deal have not been revealed.
