Technology journalism media is aflame with the newest acquisition of TweetDeck by Twitter. The social media corporation has decided to make a functionally lateral move by absorbing the social media dashboard software in the wake of them developing their own aggregation services. While the acquisition is yet unannounced (thus the estimated buy may change) but CNN Money feels that it’s solid enough to run with the story,

Twitter has acquired TweetDeck, an application for organizing the display of tweets, for more than $40 million in a mix of cash and stock, according to sources close to the deal.

TweetDeck has been the subject of speculation about deals for months. TechCrunch surfaced reports, citing a $40 million-$50 million acquisition. The deal has yet to be announced, but papers finalizing the deal were signed Monday.

Whatever is going down, Twitter has zipped its collective beaks: “For all those who might be curious, we continue to not comment on rumors,” @twitterglobalpr tweeted late Monday night.

TweetDeck is an Adobe AIR application that allows users to aggregate a great deal of different social media streams into one dashboard—from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and many others. As a popular app for PCs, Chrome, Android, and iPhone/iPad it’s positioned well to become a focused face for Twitter. According to sources, TweetDeck has become the most popular Twitter app not made by Twitter themselves.

The acquisition represents a long line of Twitter attempting to marginalize competitive technologies that use their service until they’ve lined them up for ambush. Much unlike their swallow-like symbol, Twitter seems to have taken the bird-of-prey approach. We’ve had Twitter with us now for more than 5 years and yet their business model is still solidifying.

Some analysts are not huge fans of Twitter jumping out and devouring apps like TweetDeck as to how it changes their position in the social media ecology.

“Twitter continues its wrecking ball approach to destroying competition and confidence in its developer ecosystem with today’s acquisition news,” says Mark Hopkins, Editor and Chief of SiliconANGLE. “It wasn’t unexpected, nor is it welcome by the few remaining Twitter advocates out there.”

Looking at how Twitter has been moving in the business sphere, it’s obvious that Twitter wants to control the entire user experience from the submission of tweets to their reception. As the most popular 3^rd party Twitter app, TweetDeck proved to be a roadblock to that total experience control.

As a result, the rumor mill has been churning about what might happen to TweetDeck in the wake of Twitter’s acquisition. Current fears run the gamut from concerns about the entire application being trampled underfoot (changed to the point where it becomes a Twitter-only app) or having its line ended entirely so that Twitter can direct attention to its more official apps.