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Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

online.wsj.com

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Re: Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

#11

Post by brown9-2 »

mbesto wrote: post #7

An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the deal but wouldn't comment further. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," she said without elaborating further. Question for those more experienced here, but doesn't "purpose or plans" of acquisitions generally fall under things that you have a duty to share with your shareholders?

"Duty" is somewhat subjective. They also have a "duty" to those shareholders to keep those plans secret if they deem that secrecy is beneficial for the business plans.

Re: Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

#13

Post by andrewhillman »

brandnewlow wrote: post #4

The Topsy API is the best way to surface "trend" type data from Twitter. I'm a little confused as to why Apple would make this acquisition, but of the companies doing things in the "make the Twitter firehose accessible" space, Topsy has had the best product for some time.

I think they will use this to tweak AppStore app ranking algorithm. User app reviews only go so far.

Re: Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

#16

Post by codyb »

andrewhillman wrote: post #13
brandnewlow wrote: post #4

The Topsy API is the best way to surface "trend" type data from Twitter. I'm a little confused as to why Apple would make this acquisition, but of the companies doing things in the "make the Twitter firehose accessible" space, Topsy has had the best product for some time.

I think they will use this to tweak AppStore app ranking algorithm. User app reviews only go so far.

I was also thinking possibly using this data and other streams to possibly give Siri the ability to answer more accurately questions like "Siri, what is going on in the United States today?" (Or where I live, work, etc).

Just in case Siri was already really good I gave it a check but it was mostly lame USA facts on twitter, and a news reel of links to a somewhat better representation of an answer to the question but mostly foreign relations and bigger picture stories where the USA is mentioned explicitly. I have a feeling things like "A catastrophic tornado in Tennessee…" which only mentions that state probably wouldn't come up as readily yet.

And that is definitely an incredibly hard question to tackle too.

Re: Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

#17

Post by hkmurakami »

brandnewlow wrote: post #4

The Topsy API is the best way to surface "trend" type data from Twitter. I'm a little confused as to why Apple would make this acquisition, but of the companies doing things in the "make the Twitter firehose accessible" space, Topsy has had the best product for some time.

Their expertise could be used in any number of ways in Apple's various server side services imo.

Re: Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

#18

Post by ghshephard »

esolyt wrote: post #6

Flagged because it's behind a login wall.

As always, with the WSJ - just do a google search for the title and you can bypass the paywall:

This worked for me: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230485480...

(might be time limited though)

Re: Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

#19

Post by pbreit »

mbesto wrote: post #7

An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the deal but wouldn't comment further. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," she said without elaborating further. Question for those more experienced here, but doesn't "purpose or plans" of acquisitions generally fall under things that you have a duty to share with your shareholders?

Not on a spend as small as that (0.04% of market cap).

Re: Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Startup Topsy Labs

#20

Post by gsharma »

brandnewlow wrote: post #4

The Topsy API is the best way to surface "trend" type data from Twitter. I'm a little confused as to why Apple would make this acquisition, but of the companies doing things in the "make the Twitter firehose accessible" space, Topsy has had the best product for some time.

I was confused too. However, I think they are going to bring in-app search (like Android) to iOS. They can always auto index the apps on the device and then send the data to their servers. Alternatively they may also relase APIs for developers to push user specific content to their servers to index items (more like ElasticSearch or AWS CloudSearch.)

$200M is a lot of money to just improve the app store search. They might end up using it for that too.

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