Micro Acquisition: TwitterCounter Subsumes Twitaholic

Before there was Twitter stats site Twitter Counter, there was TwitterHolic (now called Twitaholic). Now Twitter Counter has acquired Twitaholic to bolster its Twitter stats services, and the combined entity will be named TwittaHolicCounterTweet (just kidding there).

Are you still twith me?

In all seriousness, Twitaholic was the first site to put up a ranking of the top 100 users on Twitter, while TwitterCounter was the first site to offer detailed personal stats and embeddable widgets and banners to brag about your follower count, so this makes sense.

TwitterCounter has been talking to the people behind Twitaholic, which was always a bit of a side project for its founders, since early 2009, but has now gone ahead and bought the site outright (obviously not for a large amount, although details remain undisclosed).

TwitterCounter says it can monetize the traffic Twitaholic still pulls by offering premium statistics (currently used by companies like Microsoft, eBay, Coca-Cola and Facebook) and with its Featured User spots, which give people an easy way to gain more followers.

TwitterCounter may look gimmicky, but it’s actually quite a nice little business – the company has 3 full-time employees, logged about $500,000 in revenues in 2010 and is still growing.

The founders of Twitaholic are moving on to other projects. The site will be kept live, although TwitterCounter says small changes may be made to the layout or functionality.

In the interest of full disclosure: turns out Twitaholic was part of the same company that held Emurse, which was acquired by our parent company AOL back in April 2009 (AOL had no interest in Twitaholic, however). Twitaholic’s founders will now focus on opening and working from AOL’s brand new Orlando office (actually opening next week).

Update: Background: how Twitter Counter acquired Twitaholic