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Apple Acquires Social Analytics Firm Topsy for $200 Million

Monday December 2, 2013 1:05 pm PST by Juli Clover
topsyApple has purchased social analytics firm Topsy for more than $200 million, reports The Wall Street Journal. According to its website, Topsy is a social search and analytics company that partners with Twitter to maintain an index of Tweets going back to 2006.

Topsy also makes products to search and analyze trends on social websites like Twitter and Google+. With its analytics tools, companies can analyze keywords by several different metrics such as activity, exposure, geography, or general sentiment. The Topsy website also serves as a search engine that looks through shared content on social networks and ranks results based on a social influence algorithm.
Topsy specializes in data from Twitter, offering tools to analyze tweets and other information to help track consumer sentiment. Its tools can decipher how often a specific term is tweeted, find an influential person on a specific subject, or measure the exposure of an event or campaign.

The company is one of a handful of Twitter’s partners who have access to the so-called "firehose"—the full stream of all tweets posted to the service. Topsy competes with DataSift Inc. and Gnip Inc. to analyze and resell this data to customers.
An Apple spokesperson confirmed the acquisition with the company’s standard line: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple could possibly use Topsy's technology within iTunes Radio, and it could also be useful in the App Store, delivering content recommendations based on Twitter trends. It could also be used as a way to bolster iAd, providing data to marketers to serve targeted ads in iRadio.

Apple's purchase of Topsy comes after several other acquisitions earlier this year focused on mapping. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple made a total of 15 acquisitions during fiscal 2013.

[ 83 comments ]


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FirstNTenderbit
76 months ago
"... and it could also be useful in the App Store, delivering content recommendations based on Twitter trends"

KILL ME
Rating: 22 Votes
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AMDeeb
76 months ago
Apple acquires a company for more than $200m:

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Apple acquires a company for $1b:

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Apple acquires Google:

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

:confused:
Rating: 20 Votes
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DTphonehome
76 months ago
Ping 2.0 :D
Rating: 10 Votes
Avatar
Rogifan
76 months ago

He has no clue. He is just buying everything he can put his arms on hoping that this will spur growth but it ain't happening.


At least he wasn't stupid enough to buy Motorola Mobility. :D
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
Rogifan
76 months ago

Finally!! Since Apple will start paying attention, we can finally see:
- iPhone with SD card slot, microUSB and user-replaceable battery for ~$350
- iMacs with easy access to RAM and HD.
- Themes, skins, and user selectable color schemes. Like iOS7 with iOS6 look.
- Mac between Mini and Pro.
- Everything starts at 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD
- 20% (or more) price drops across the board.
Let's start tweetin' Market share will soon follow


You drunk?
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
Carl Sagan
76 months ago
TV. It's about TV.
Rating: 6 Votes
Avatar
menithings
76 months ago

Finally!! Since Apple will start paying attention, we can finally see:
- iPhone with SD card slot, microUSB and user-replaceable battery for ~$350
- iMacs with easy access to RAM and HD.
- Themes, skins, and user selectable color schemes. Like iOS7 with iOS6 look.
- Mac between Mini and Pro.
- Everything starts at 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD
- 20% (or more) price drops across the board.
Let's start tweetin' Market share will soon follow


1996 called. It wants this message back.
Rating: 6 Votes
Avatar
Porco
76 months ago
People aren't algorithms, you wasted your money Apple.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
kdarling
76 months ago
Would've thought they could've hired some contractors to write the same kind of thing, for much less than $200 million.

Or, who knows... Topsy only has like two patents, but perhaps they're really good ones.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
kdarling
76 months ago

Seems to me a company like that would have a lot of skilled people who could help Apple in web and back end services that always seem to be a weak part of their systems.


Good point!
Rating: 3 Votes

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