Twitter acquires OpenBack to make push notifications better

New Delhi, April 13

Twitter has acquired OpenBack, a Dublin-based push notifications company, for an undisclosed sum as the micro-blogging platform aims to make notifications timely, relevant and engaging.

In a tweet thread, Jay Sullivan who is Twitter's head of consumer product said that OpenBack offers "device-side control of push notifications".

"The best push notifications bring people to the conversations they care about on Twitter. But irrelevant notifications are a distraction. With millions of people visiting Twitter via notifications every day, we want them to be timely, relevant and engaging," he said late on Tuesday.

"OpenBack and their talented team joining Twitter will help us improve our ability to deliver the right notifications at the right time, in a way that puts people's privacy first," Sullivan added.

OpenBack is a mobile engagement platform that helps make apps more engaging.

Founded in 2015, OpenBack makes it easier for mobile apps to process data on-device without needing to go through a third-party server, unlike conventional push notification providers.

OpenBack CEO David Shackleton said in a tweet that they tried to "make push notifications truly user first for billions of people in a new way, and this opportunity to work with @Twitter fulfills that in so many ways more than we ever imagined".