Mike Isaac

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TweetDeck Chief Iain Dodsworth Departs Twitter

Iain Dodsworth, founder of the power-user application TweetDeck, announced Friday that he is leaving Twitter, two years after TweetDeck was acquired by the microblogging company.

“Two years since the @TweetDeck acquisition and now feels like a perfect time to start something new. Goodbye @Twitter, it’s been marvellous,” Dodsworth said in a tweet on Friday morning. (The photo to the right is a parting shot of Dodsworth’s soon-to-be-former colleagues.)

Dodsworth didn’t give specifics on his next venture, but given that the departure comes almost two years to the day that his company was acquired, it’s likely that he was staying through the end of an agreed-upon retention contract.

Questions arose as to the future of TweetDeck in recent months, since Twitter decided to kill its Adobe Air and native mobile apps. Dodsworth’s departure could be seen as a foreboding sign for the future of the product as a whole. Combine that with the dissolving of TweetDeck’s old brand, and the U.K. press certainly seems to think that’s the case.

I doubt it, though. Two weeks ago, Twitter hired a new product manager, Sharath Bulusu, who will head up the project after Dodsworth’s departure. And the company has nearly doubled the size of the TweetDeck team over the past year.

My hunch — expect continued focus on TweetDeck for the Web. In the post where TweetDeck for Air was put to pasture, it’s where Twitter emphasized most of its efforts for the future. “In many ways, doubling down on the TweetDeck web experience and discontinuing our app support is a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going,” the blog post read.

If you feel like getting all nostalgic, check out Peter Kafka’s interview with Dodsworth when he joined Twitter two years ago.

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