Twitter Buys Design Agency Nclud, Appoints Co-Founder Twitter’s New Design Manager

A small but interesting acquisition for Twitter as it continues to hone the services that it delivers to brands and other would-be advertisers alongside its core microblogging service: it has bought Nclud, a Washington, DC-based web design agency for an undisclosed amount.

The deal was announced by co-founder and director of brand experience Martin Ringlein, appropriately enough, on Twitter (where he tweets as @martymadrid): “It’s true … @nclud was acquired. As of today, I am the new Design Manager at Twitter!!” he wrote on Sunday.

Things are moving fast. Today, he noted that he was filling out paperwork for his first day at work.

We’ve reached out to Twitter and Nclud to try to get some more color on the deal, but the acquisition makes sense as Twitter continues to mature and look both for ways of servicing advertisers — and its own customer base — with compelling design on different platforms.

Nclud up to now has mainly been and advertising and marketing design agency, with its team working on a number of projects for both web and mobile screens including the different projects for Oracle, including its iPhone app, Ogilvy PR’s website and Politico’s iPhone app.

If Twitter continues this line of business, this could mean the company itself branching out into more traditional web advertising work. But if this is an aqui-hire situation, then it will be about using the talent on the staff (12 if you include the two cute dogs) to enhance what Twitter is doing.

Twitter has been on a bit of a buying spree, moster recently picking up Posterous in March. We’ll update this post as we learn more.