Twitter has announced it will acquire SnappyTV. The service enables companies, such as broadcasters, to clip and share live video almost immediately after it broadcasts.

"One of the best ways to follow events as they unfold is through real-time videos on Twitter. As we continue to invest in video, it’s important for us to provide tools that make it easy for TV broadcasters, businesses, and event producers to share high-quality videos," announced Twitter in a blog post on Thursday. "To that end, we’ve agreed to acquire SnappyTV."

A Standford graduate and UCLA graduate, who also re-built the backend of video at Yahoo, started SnappyTV four years ago. The service not only offers a suite of tools that enable other companies to edit, share, and archive live video and television directly from within the cloud but also enables them to quickly create, distribute, and measure real-time "promotional messaging" delivered through social media such as Twitter.

Through its official website, SnappyTV explained it "powers the clips of the biggest moments for sharing to the biggest audiences brought to you by the biggest brands". And going forward at Twitter, the service promised to continue "maintaining an open platform for social broadcasting of live events, across a variety of digital platforms". Specifically, joining Twitter will allow SnappyTV to provide an "even better product" to more companies throughout the world.

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It's unclear if Twitter wants to give users more ways to tweet out video highlights of sports games or breaking news - or if it simply wants to pair SnappyTV with another service it owns that allows companies to place ads in front of video clips. The combination would give Twitter another way to monetise, but that's just speculation. Twitter has only said it would integrate SnappyTV "more tightly" with Twitter.