The rumor that Twitter might purchase the 15-employee TweetDeck for a whopping $50 million hit the Twittersphere like a freight train. I watched as my TweetDeck stream columns filled up with retweets of the original news (first reported by the Wall Street Journal) and expressions of shock, surprise and worry about the news from TweetDeck devotees.

My Tweet: "If Twitter gets TweetDeck, there will likely be no more TweetDeck. #justsayin"

For those unfamiliar with TweetDeck, it's a highly configurable Adobe Air-based browser for social activity, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, even Google Buzz. Most people I know use it to manage Twitter. The default three columns include the Twitter stream for everyone you follow, another for all those who mention you, and a third for your Direct Messages. You can add an endless number of columns that track individual Twitter members, hashtag-based queries, and general searches. There are numerous tools to shorten URLs, upload photos, even tweet longer posts (Twitter does not like third-party clients encouraging users to post tweets longer than 140 characters). In the early days, this desktop client regularly overloaded Twitter API calls and, essentially, stalled. Though the TweetDeck has yet to reach version 1.0 status, there have been countless updates and most of the major kinks have been worked out.

TweetDeck's power extends beyond the primary interface to pop-up alerts that help me track new and important posts from those I follow. Festooned with a variety of controls, those little windows are almost as powerful as the entire TweetDeck interface. As of today, Twitter.com can't match this functionality. In a nutshell, TweetDeck is a powerful Twitter tool that lets me leave the Twitter homepage—and even New Twitter—behind, and I don't think Twitter likes that one bit.

As I've been explaining for well over a year, Twitter is not interested in supporting third-party Twitter clients. It has changed its API and publicly encouraged partners to stop building third-party Twitter feed readers. Buying TweetDeck would not be an act of expansion; it would be an investment in demolition. Some have rightly noted that Twitter is probably equally interested in the Twitterati who populate TweetDeck. They're people like me who probably tweet far more than the average person and have enough followers to create mini ripples in the Twitter-sphere. I know that true power users like Alyssa Milano (1.5 million followers) and Ashton Kutcher (6.5 mil followers) use TweetDeck. Even Mark Zuckerberg has tried it.

Twitter's grown tired of all the third-party tools built on its API back; not because there's anything inherently wrong with these tools, but because Twitter's long-term strategy requires as many eyeballs as possible on its own home-grown Twitter services and tools. If the majority of Twitter users view their tweets through third-party tools that simply make calls to Twitter's API's, they'll never see Twitter partner ads, promos, or Quickbars. Twitter loses control not only of the conversation, but the ability to monetize millions and millions of eyeballs and social activity.

New Twitter, with its multi-pane screen and ability to play photos and video inside the Twitter stream, made clear that Twitter is serious about taking on Twitter dashboard competitors.

Here's what will happen if Twitter successfully acquires TweetDeck:

Initially, nothing. Twitter will spend months digging into TweetDeck and taking a good look at its user base. One key goal will be how to encourage those power users to stick with Twitter when the inevitable happens:

A) TweetDeck resolves to a new version of Twitter.com. Twitter can't visit everyone's desktop and remove TweetDeck. Instead, I think it'll rewrite the API so opening up TweetDeck actually sends you to New Twitter inside the TweetDeck window or simply opens the browser window on top of it.

B) TweetDeck survives, but is renamed ("TwitDeck"?) and reprogrammed to support more direct visibility for promoted Tweets and possibly even a Quickbar. This is unlikely.

We should all stop, though, for a moment and consider the possibility that this is just a wild rumor. Remember, TweetDeck has been the subject acquisition speculation before. A couple of months ago, everyone thought UberSocial (formerly UberTwitter) was going to buy TweetDeck. That possibility is certainly more palatable to the Twitterati than a Twitter buy. UberSocial has its own mobile Twitter clients (as does TweetDeck) and would do well to have a powerful desktop-based offering. In other words, UberSocial would not kill TweetDeck.

In all likelihood, no one will buy TweetDeck and it, like other third-party Twitter tools, will continue to weather Twitter's API changes and new dictums about what you should and should not call your third-party Twitter clients. I just hope TweetDeck can survive. Period.

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