Apple Acquires Social Analytics Firm Topsy for $200 MillionApple 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. 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 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. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories • Major League Baseball Offering Gift Subscriptions for MLB At Bat 2014 • Apple Files Formal Complaint Over Monitor Fees in E-Book Antitrust Case • 'The Bureau: XCOM Declassified' Now Available for Mac • Thai Man Reportedly Electrocuted After Using a Charging iPhone 4S • Seasonal Turkey Helm Now Available in 'Infinity Blade III' • iPhone 5s/5c Take 76% of Smartphone Sales in Japan for October • Magpul Releases Field Case for iPad Mini • GTA: San Andreas Coming to iOS in December With Full MFi Controller Support
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/02/apple-acquires-social-analytics-firm-topsy-for-200-million/
