Twitter Buys Password Security Startup Mitro

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Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has acquired Mitro, a small password-security start-up. The acquisition will help the micro-blogging firm to enhance its geolocation capabilities. The New York-based start-up is founded by ex- Google engineers, and the deal was announced by the company on its site without revealing the financial terms.

Different approach from Twitter

With improved geolocation technology, small advertisers on Twitter will be able to better target local consumers. In 2009, Twitter acquired Mixer Labs, with the help of which the micro-blogging site was able to add location tags to the tweets.

Unlike the earlier acquisitions, Twitter is allowing to the product to continue for this one. The product will become an open source project; also, the start-up is working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to help it become self-sustaining, nonprofit, community-run service. All of Mitro’s server and client code has been made available under the GPL license on GitHub.

Previously, when Twitter acquired Posterous, it closed the product. But to make available an alternative to the Posterous users, co-founder and now current Y Combinator partner Garry Tan created Posthaven.

Mitro to continue as independent firm

Mitro was incorporated in 2012 as Lectorius Inc., and raised $2.4 million from Google Ventures and Matrix Partners. Mitro’s password manager for Web browsers allows users to easily share their accounts. According to the startup, their product will become an open-source, community-run project, and the team will join Twitter to work on geolocation projects.

“We’ve been working hard to build a secure, easy-to-use password manager for individuals and groups,” Mitro wrote on its website. “We’ve made great progress and we believe that the community can help us accomplish even more.”

According to EFF, even though Mitro team is joining Twitter, but the company will continue as an independent firm. Also, Mitro has agreed to fund the operation of its servers for at least this year.

EFF described Mitro as “already quite a mature and usable system.”  The organization does not recommend using the Android version of the app, as of now, owing to the security issues from the use of the Android clipboard.

Twitter seems to be on a shopping spree as Mitro acquisition was less than 24-hours after the social media company announced the acquisition of deep learning tech start-up Madbits.

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