Michal Ždanský Apple today confirmed the purchase of social media analytics firm Topsy Labs. Topsy specializes in analyzing the social network Twitter, where it examines the trends of specific terms. For example, it can find out how often a given thing is talked about (tweeted), who is an influential personality within the term, or it can measure the effectiveness of a campaign or the impact of an event.
Topsy is also one of the few companies that has access to Twitter's extended API, i.e. the complete stream of published tweets. The company then analyzes the obtained data and sells it to its clients, which include, for example, advertising agencies.
It is not entirely clear how Apple intends to use the purchased company, Wall Street Journal however, he speculates about a possible tie-in with music streaming service iTunes Radio. With data from Topsy, listeners could, for example, get information about currently popular songs or artists that are being talked about on Twitter. Or the data could be used to track user behavior and better target advertising in real time. So far, Apple has had bad luck with advertising, its attempt to monetize free applications through iAds has not yet found much response from advertisers.
Apple paid around 200 million dollars (roughly four billion crowns) for the acquisition, the company's spokeswoman gave a standard comment on the purchase: "Apple buys small technology companies from time to time, and we generally don't talk about the purpose or our plans."
