Bill Gross’ UberMedia has announced a $5.6 million investment from German media giant Burda Digital through its investment arm, DLD Ventures. This brings UberMedia’s total funding to $26.6 million.
UberMedia actually just raised a healthy $17.5 million earlier this year, so Burda’s cash is also a strategic investment. The company has made investments in Xing, Etsy, Glam and other well-known technology companies. UberMedia says the investment will be used to further the growth of UberMedia’s user base both in the U.S. and internationally.
Bill Gross’ strategy to monetize Twitter has led UberMedia to become the largest owner of Twitter clients besides Twitter itself. The company bought a number of clients over the past year, including Echofon, UberTwitter and others. Unfortunately, UberMedia was trying to buy popular Twitter client TweetDeck, but Twitter snatched up TweetDeck to keep it out of Gross’s hands. UberMedia’s says its user base has grown to more than 5,000,000 users in just over a year. Users of the company’s Twitter apps currently Tweet more than 200 times per second, representing approximately 13% of all traffic on the Twitter platform.
Besides over the TweetDeck deal, Twitter and UberMedia have also been at odds over another issue Twitter temporarily shut UberMedia’s Twitter apps down after claiming that UberMedia was violating its Terms of Service — a move that Gross said took UberMedia by surprise.
TweetDeck and Terms of Service aside, UberMedia clearly has a plan. The company has partnered with a variety of celebs, including Ashton Kutcher and 50 Cent, to offer customer Twitter apps and skins. Gross says that we can expect similar partnerships with celebrities in the future.