Twitter purchases music discovery service We Are Hunted

Acquisition confirmed on the same day Ryan Seacrest reveals existance of Twitter music app

Twitter seems to be on the cusp of going head first into the music business.

On the same day that the company confirmed via Tweet that it had purchased music discovery service We Are Hunted, it was also revealed, again by Tweet, that the social network has also created a music app.

Let's start with the acquisition. Though the news of the purchase of We Are Hunted was first reported almost a month ago by CNet, it was not confirmed until Thursday with tweets from both the company and Twitter:

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. It was originally reported that the acquisition was made last year, and that We Are Hunted's technology would be used to build a standalone music app called Twitter Music.

While none of those details were confirmed, We Are Hunted did provide some information on its homepage Thursday, sharing that the company will be shutting down, as would all accounts on the service, but promising that it would "continue to create services that will delight you, as part of the Twitter team."

"There's no question that Twitter and music go well together. Artists turn to Twitter first to connect with fans, and people share and discover new songs and albums every day. We can't wait to share what we've been working on at Twitter," the company wrote. 

We Are Hunted was founded by Stephen Phillips, Richard Slatter and Michael Doherty in Brisbane, Australia in 2007. The service first launched in 2009, and recently relocated to San Francisco. The app provided a continually updated list of the best new songs, as measured by popularity on music blogs and social media. We Are Hunted also charted the most popular mainstream and top 40 artists, publishing music charts in a range of genres. Users of the app could stream music, create playlists, and share their favorites on social media.

While the company could not provide any any additional details on what it would be doing at Twitter, simply saying, "We wish we could say but we're not yet ready to talk about it. You'll hear more from us when we are," it would probably be a good bet that the team would be working on the Twitter music app that was revealed today in two Tweets from Ryan Seacrest:

Of course, not much is known about the Twitter music app at this point, but it continues the direction Twitter has going over the last year: from a social network into a media company.

This part summer, Twitter partnered with Nascar, to allow users to “experience events” on its iPhone with special hashtags such as #NASCAR, which will allow users to get special content, such as Tweets from drivers and photos. Twitter also made a deal with NBC to create an Olympics hub, in which Twitter served as an official narrator for the live events. Then there was the filling of an open seat on its board of directors by Hollywood executive Peter Chernin, who has experience as the head of a leading media company, as well as developing products online.

Twitter also introduced Twitter Cards, a way of allow for the embedding of more content into an expandable tweet. The feature allows developers to attach "cards" to their tweets that will display content such as headlines, photos, and articles from around the web.

By launching its own music app, Twitter is taking another step toward becoming a place where users consume content rather than create it.

Vator reached out to Twitter, but a spokesperson referred us back to the message on We Are Hunted's homepage.

(Image source: https://wearehunted.com)