Twitter buys Dasient, ups its security

2012 looks like it will be at least as exciting a year in acquisitions for Twitter

Twitter has a healthy appetite for small start-ups that can provide the micro-blogging site more tools to grow its services. The newest Twitter acquisition is the Web-security company Dasient that has had previous investors such as Google Ventures, Radar Partners, Floodgate and Benhamou Global Ventures. Dasient confirmed the acquisition in a statement Tuesday. This is Twitter's eighth acquisition since 2011.

Effective immediately, Dasient will fold its technology, tools, and team into the revenue engineering team at Twitter. The details on the amount of the acquisition were not publicly disclosed -- a common thread in the Twitter deals we have seen in the past.

(Note: Mike Brown, head of Twitter's Corp Dev, will be at Vator Splash Feb 2. Join Brown and other high-tech influencers by registering here. We'll try to get Brown to talk about what other acquisitions Twitter may be considering.)

Dasient was founded in 2008 with the focus on making the Web a safer place for online businesses. Dasient's cloud-based, Web-scale technology searches for best defense against Web-based malware attacks. 

In 2009, Dasient launched its Web anti-malware platform, capable of scanning URLs and websites for the presence of harmful content. The, in 2010, Dasient launched an anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from malicious ads. 

"Neil Daswani, Shariq Rizvi and Ameet Ranadive have created technology that provides network security and malware prevention service for some of the largest ad networks in the world," a Twitter representitive told me. "Their team has an excellent understanding of advertising platform-related security issues and will be a valuable addition to the revenue engineering team."

Now a part of the growing Twitter team, Dasient will be able to apply its technology and team to the world’s largest real-time information network for its increasing need for security measure.

"By joining Twitter, Dasient will be able to apply its technology and team to the world's largest real-time information network," co-founder and CTO Neil Daswani, wrote in a blog post.

 As part of this merger, Dasient will no longer able to accept new customers.

A little Twitter acquisition history

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company joins a pantheon of companies that Twitter considered must haves.

Earlier this month, Twitter picked up Summify, a service a service that culls through users' social media profiles to deliver a daily digest of the most relevant stories.

In November, the micro-blogging service purchased Whisper Systems, a mobile security startup.

Then, back in August, Twitter grabbed Bagcheck -- a service that lets users create and curate 'bags' that house collections around social interests, which could be anything from the best picture sharing apps to resources for cooking. Bagcheck lets users share their bags, or lists, via Facebook and Twitter. 

One of the biggest companies that Twitter snapped up was the third-party aggragator that helped people tweet: Tweetdeck. Twitter acquired TweetDeck back in May after a lot of speculation about what would happen if Twitter grabbed up one of the most popular ways to interact with the microblogging service.

“This acquisition is an important step forward for us,” wrote Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. “TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about. In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love.”

Months before the acquisiton, the media was reporting that UberMedia’s $30 million acquisition of TweetDeck was all but final; but finality never came on that front.

Some of the issues that have come from Twitter's hefty appitite are the results of integration and, usually, the discontinuation of the independant services and sites. One of my favorite applications has been Tweetdeck, but once Twitter snapped it up, there were changes and integrations that reduced the fuctions I had on the service and now I am in the market for a new way to tweet. 

Other startups that were purchased include: Summize, Mixer Labs, Fluther, Atebits, Cloudhopper and Smallthought Systems. This brings Twitter acquisitions to at least a dozen start-ups since the start of 2010 -- eight of which were in 2011.

Twitter has not been shy about its desire to grow its tools and talent and 2012 looks like a time when the company will only gear up -- not level off.