Apple Acquires Social Analytics Firm Topsy for $200 Million
Apple 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.
Popular Stories
Following nearly two years of rumors about a fourth-generation iPhone SE, The Information today reported that Apple suppliers are finally planning to begin ramping up mass production of the device in October of this year. If accurate, that timeframe would mean that the next iPhone SE would not be announced alongside the iPhone 16 series in September, as expected. Instead, the report...
Key details about the overall specifications of the iPhone 17 lineup have been shared by the leaker known as "Ice Universe," clarifying several important aspects of next year's devices. Reports in recent months have converged in agreement that Apple will discontinue the "Plus" iPhone model in 2025 while introducing an all-new iPhone 17 "Slim" model as an even more high-end option sitting...
Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today shared alleged specifications for a new ultra-thin iPhone 17 model rumored to launch next year. Kuo expects the device to be equipped with a 6.6-inch display with a current-size Dynamic Island, a standard A19 chip rather than an A19 Pro chip, a single rear camera, and an Apple-designed 5G chip. He also expects the device to have a...
Apple typically releases its new iPhone series around mid-September, which means we are about two months out from the launch of the iPhone 16. Like the iPhone 15 series, this year's lineup is expected to stick with four models – iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max – although there are plenty of design differences and new features to take into account. To bring ...
Apple’s iCloud Private Relay service is down for some users, according to Apple’s System Status page. Apple says that the iCloud Private Relay service may be slow or unavailable. The outage started at 2:34 p.m. Eastern Time, but it does not appear to be affecting all iCloud users. Some impacted users are unable to browse the web without turning iCloud Private Relay off, while others are...