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DabbleDB Acquired by Twitter

June 10, 2010 13:34:53.065

This is the kind of technology merger that never seems to go well - Twitter just bought DabbleDB:

Obviously this represents a new chapter in the life of Dabble DB, both for us as a team, and for the product itself. We’d like to assure you that, for now, we will continue to provide our software and technical support to current Dabble DB customers. However, we will be disabling new account signups effective immediately.

What the disablement means is that Twitter doesn't care about DabbleDB as a business; they bought technology and staff. However, that's where I get skeptical. DabbleDB is built on Squeak/Seaside, while Twitter is built on Ruby and Scala (apparently less Rails than it used to be). I have a hard time seeing the Twitter folks adopting Squeak; the typical pattern in these acquisitions is something like this:

  • Those guys have great technology; let's buy it
  • Their tech isn't built the same as ours; we'll take the ideas and rewrite it
  • .... years pass
  • ... original technology dies, completely new project that is less based on the acquisition than you might like to think appears

From the link above, it's clear that the purchase was all about the Trendly analytics stuff - which makes any future for DabbleDB itself even more murky, IMHO. This is obviously a nice exit for the DabbleDB folks, and that's great for them.

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posted by James Robertson

Comments

Re: DabbleDB Acquired by Twitter

[john blue] June 10, 2010 14:32:49.471

I have been a dabbledb user for several years and I agree that the move to Twitter makes no sense. I do not believe Twitter is interested in dabbledb services I am buying so I need to figure out next steps for our application. Ug.

Open source dabbledb technology anyone?

Re: DabbleDB Acquired by Twitter

[anonymous] June 10, 2010 15:57:22.295

yeah, this blows. I have been a user of Dabble DB for over two years and now I had better find some replacement tools. Dabble DB has done some great things for my small organization and has made it easy for me to create a number of data form that I can integrate into my website. I guess all good things come to an end.

Re: DabbleDB Acquired by Twitter

[Geert] June 10, 2010 15:59:34.255

I agree! If Twitter is not interested in DabbleDB I reckon they should (allow Avi to) share the Dabble DB source code as a lot of Smalltalkers would love to learn from Dabble DB :)

Re: DabbleDB Acquired by Twitter

[stefan] June 11, 2010 7:29:26.715

Anyone have any ideas about an alternative to dabble db? This is the kind of thing that shows the problem with saas...

Re: DabbleDB Acquired by Twitter

[Sofia] June 11, 2010 13:56:21.192

John Blue, Stefan- You should check out Caspio. They're offering Dabble DB customers a free transition program through the end of the month. They talk more about publishing your online database apps with Caspio at www.caspio.com/dabble.

Hope this helps! :)

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