Apple is not known for being social - rather, it is known
for being buttoned up about everything it does. But on Monday, the
company confirmed that it had bought Topsy Labs, a research company that
could help Apple better understand what people are talking about on
social media networks like Twitter.
Topsy
focuses on analyzing the half a billion messages sent over Twitter every
day. The company has indexed every tweet ever sent and has made them
searchable, much like Google does for the web. The company also helps
clients analyze tweets for various business trends.
While
Apple has built some of its software to work with Twitter's service, it
remained unclear why a hardware maker like Apple would be interested in
Topsy. Apple was not giving any clues.
"Apple
buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally
do not discuss our purpose or plans," said Kristin Huguet, an Apple
spokeswoman. She did not disclose how much Apple paid for Topsy.
Apple
has made a fortune making hardware, but it has botched some online
services in the past, like Ping, Apple's short-lived social network for
finding music.
Ross Rubin, an independent analyst for Reticle Research,
said
Apple could use Topsy's data analysis to better understand popular
trends on social media and make smarter recommendations for things like
finding apps, music and movies to buy, or perhaps finding content to
watch with a future TV service.
Rob Bailey,
chief executive of DataSift, one of Topsy's competitors, said Topsy
might have been appealing to Apple because of its expertise in searching
and indexing the vast amounts of unstructured content that make up
Twitter. He added that Apple could use the search technology to help
power its Siri voice search capabilities.
A Topsy spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.
Perhaps
one clue to Apple's interest lies in an experiment Topsy did involving
one of Apple's flagship products, the iPhone 4S. In a September
interview, Topsy executives described a project for a hedge fund in
which they tracked sentiments on Twitter about the October 2012
introduction of the Apple phone.
The phone
underwhelmed professional critics, sending Apple's stock down. But Topsy
found that Twitter users were more positive, suggesting that the phone
would sell well. Sure enough, Apple reported strong sales figures later,
sending the stock up.
0 comments:
Post a Comment