As reported by CNNMoney, sources have stated that Twitter has acquired TweetDeck for $40 million made up of cash and stock. The deal has not been officially announced by either Twitter or TweetDeck. As has been discussed in tech news since February, Twitter had to either buy TweetDeck or put up with a major competitor that could substantially cut into Twitter's ad revenue if UberMedia were to snap up TweetDeck instead.

Reportedly the talks regarding UberMedia purchasing TweetDeck ground to a halt sometime earlier this year and Twitter took the opportunity to step up and purchase TweetDeck instead. UberMedia's Twitter clients, UberSocial, Twidroyd, and EchoFon are direct competitors to both Twitter's own clients and TweetDeck.

Twitter's purchase of TweetDeck was definitely a wise move on Twitter's part and means that Twitter now controls one of the largest clients of its service. TweetDeck runs on many mobile and desktop platforms and is frequently used by Twitter "power users."

It will be interesting to see if Twitter continues TweetDeck's development in the current vein or if it integrates some features into its own Twitter app which was acquired by buying out Tweetie, another third party Twitter client.

Update: TweetDeck announced the sale to Twitter on their blog this morning and now Twitter has done the same.