TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Twitter has acquired Tweetie from Loren Brichter, and it will be rebranding it as Twitter for iPhone, and will be free.

Surprising news, for sure. This makes sense for Twitter–having an official iPhone Twitter application will help with new users, and they’re bringing Loren Brichter to their team. That’s worth it alone.

But this creates some uncertainty. How will Tweetie change? Will it assume Twitter’s branding (icon, color scheme), or remain as-is (the latter seems more likely)? The biggest question, though, is what will happen to Tweetie for Mac.

This isn’t at all clear. Based on Evan William’s announcement, it sounds like Twitter acquired Tweetie for iPhone, not Loren’s company, Atebits. Loren still owns it, then, and before this news, was working on Tweetie for Mac 2.

But Loren now works for Twitter, so it is unlikely he’ll continue developing Tweetie for Mac on the side. I think there’s two options: he stops developing it altogether, or he sells it to someone else.

Daniel Jalkut is betting on the latter, and wants to acquire Tweetie for Mac.

Unless Loren would like to retain Tweetie for Mac and develop it further, I’m hoping Jalkut is able to acquire it. Jalkut is a great developer and great guy, and has a track record of handling acquisitions well. Jalkut acquired MarsEdit from NewsGator Technologies, and built it into a wonderful application that I use every day.

Whatever happens, though, will be exciting. Loren and the guys at Twitter are all good people who want to do things right, so I have no doubt that Twitter for iPhone, and Tweetie for Mac, will be done justice.