Sphere announced that it has been acquired by Twitter. In a post on Medium, Sphere wrote, “We’ve joined to accelerate our mission of bringing people closer together through community.” TechCrunch reported that a Twitter spokesperson confirmed the Sphere acquisition news to them.
…We originally built a marketplace of paid experts from all around the world, connecting them through group chat. What we realized is that some of the most helpful and knowledgable conversations came from groups where members felt a strong sense of belonging to one another. In other words, at the heart of our challenge was helping every single person find their community.
According to Sphere, their feed automatically clears out old or irrelevant chats to prevent groups from feeling chaotic. Their chats call out essential messages (like polls, events, and announcements) and make it more likely for people to respond. Sphere has custom appreciations that encourage people to express genuine gratitude. Sphere says that by welcoming participation, they learned groups can become more productive, vibrant, purposeful and close.
In the Medium post, Sphere expressed admiration for “Twitter’s growing investment in community-building with the release of Communities, Spaces, and features that promote safety”. In my opinion, it sounds like the people at Sphere are wonderfully optimistic about what their experience with Twitter will be like. I hope it works out the way they want it to.
Those who are currently using Sphere need to be aware that Sphere will be winding down their standalone product next month. It appears the all 20 of the team of Sphere workers will be working on Twitter’s Communities, Direct Messages and Creators initiatives soon.
Sometimes, companies acquire smaller companies who do not appear to have very much in common with what the bigger company does. In this case, it sounds like Twitter and Sphere are a good match.