Apple buys social media analytics firm Topsy for over $200M
According to a report on Monday, Apple recently spent more than $200 million to acquire Topsy Labs Inc., a social media analysis firm specializing in tracking Twitter trends.
Apple confirmed the purchase to the The Wall Street Journal on Monday with a boilerplate statement regarding recent acquisitions, declining to elaborate on deal.
"Apple buys smaller technology companies form time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," said an Apple spokeswoman.
Topsy offers highly targeted analysis of Twitter's "firehose," or the stream of tweets posted to the microblogging service. As a Twitter-certified partner, the firm looks at tweets and other user data to track user sentiment, find influencers for specific subjects and measure the effectiveness of Twitter ad campaigns, among other metrics.
It is not known what Apple plans to do with the company's assets, but the publication notes Topsy's technology could be applied to iTunes Radio to help identify and recommend artists or songs trending on Twitter. Another guess involves real-time analysis of market trends to sell advertisements on Apple's new Internet radio service.
Reports from 2010 claimed Apple had tried to strike a deal with Facebook that would connect the massive social network with iTunes, but negotiations ultimately failed, leading to the creation of the now defunct Ping social network. While mere speculation, the Topsy buy could bring a sort of unofficial connection with Twitter, though Apple could, of course, be looking to use the tech for something else entirely.
Apple confirmed the purchase to the The Wall Street Journal on Monday with a boilerplate statement regarding recent acquisitions, declining to elaborate on deal.
"Apple buys smaller technology companies form time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," said an Apple spokeswoman.
Topsy offers highly targeted analysis of Twitter's "firehose," or the stream of tweets posted to the microblogging service. As a Twitter-certified partner, the firm looks at tweets and other user data to track user sentiment, find influencers for specific subjects and measure the effectiveness of Twitter ad campaigns, among other metrics.
It is not known what Apple plans to do with the company's assets, but the publication notes Topsy's technology could be applied to iTunes Radio to help identify and recommend artists or songs trending on Twitter. Another guess involves real-time analysis of market trends to sell advertisements on Apple's new Internet radio service.
Reports from 2010 claimed Apple had tried to strike a deal with Facebook that would connect the massive social network with iTunes, but negotiations ultimately failed, leading to the creation of the now defunct Ping social network. While mere speculation, the Topsy buy could bring a sort of unofficial connection with Twitter, though Apple could, of course, be looking to use the tech for something else entirely.
Comments
Trust the nose... follow the nose... the nose will lead you...
Samsung doesn't need anyone to predict trends or analyze data... Just watch what Apple is doing and copy quickly...
Damn the patents... Bribe, payoff or "disappear" any who may slow down wholesale copying... To hell with R & D...
I'd take that one step further and make it more generic allowing it to be posted to a grouping of social services of your choice i.e. the social group might contain your Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest account details. I guess it could also be context sensitive so depending on which app you're in it only post to elements of that group.
Another possible use of Topsy's data may be to provide crowd sourced opinions / trending for Siri.
I hope we realize that Apple will be using the analytics to better provide results in their stores for both physical and digital products, as well as to provide better localization information for Siri and not some social media network of their own.
They must have bigger plans for this buy.
Don't be embarrassed by your Justin Bieber collection.
Media analytics suggests this might supplement their iAd or advertising efforts?
I can't imagine Apple buying something like Twitter at this stage. They're not going to pay $1+ Billion for a social media platform, but they might want to analyze traffic and use it to improve apps for developers or fine-tune their own advertising.
Still, it's interesting they'd pay this much for a social media analysis company, yet they have been far more frugal with their hardware and software company purchases.
You came in like a wrecking ball.
"...recently unveiled a search engine capable of searching through 425 billion or so tweets..."
What caught my attention was "search engine"!
This is just a WAG, but could Apple be looking at entering the search arena?
They can search 425 billion tweets? That is an incredible data mine! Market research on Apple and competitor products, monetization of the data like Google does with search, the possibilities are endless.
And I bet Topsy said "And boy have we patented it!"
Just in what?