The social platform Twitter has acquired the group chat app – Sphere, which was founded five years ago by British ‘serial’ entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio. Although the details regarding the value of this acquisition are not known, it is expected to help Twitter improve its recently introduced Communities feature, making conversations more interactive and organized, and will serve to strengthen ‘creator’ economy strategies.
Namely, Sphere is a chatting platform that, as stated on their website, ‘transforms groups into vibrant communities.’ It was established as an app that allows users to find questions and answers of interest in real-time, and quickly turned into a place where various topics are discussed in groups.
Serial Entrepreneur
For its founder, D’Aloisio, this is the second major sale in his career. At just 17 years old, in 2013, he sold his start-up Summly to Yahoo for $30 million. After working there for three years as a product manager, he moved to Airbnb and then founded Sphere, which also received investment from Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky. From 2017 to 2019, he managed to raise $30 million in investments for his chatting platform, which had half a million users in its first version.
Although D’Aloisio does not disclose the current number of users or the terms of the latest transaction, he told CNBC reporters that ‘everyone is happy with the deal.’ Additionally, the entrepreneur and his team have committed to working with Twitter employees to help integrate Sphere into the new platform.
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