Apple has acquired Twitter analytics firm Topsy in a deal that is apparently valued north of $200 million. It’s unclear what the Cupertino-based company will use this technology for, and we can only guess they’ll be relying on the data to better serve app/music recommendations, improve Siri search results, or something else we can’t imagine at the moment.
Twitter is already tightly integrated into iOS but I’m not sure Apple knows what to do with all those tweets sent and received from millions of iPhones and iPads sold around the world. With Topsy on its side, it could add some “big data magic,” and eventually turn bits into actionable information.
Topsy’s existing tools are designed to help companies determine what Twitter users think about certain topic. The powerful algorithm can even determine whether some chat is positive or negative. And this could somehow be bundled into product recommendations, whether we’re talking about books, songs, movies, apps or something else. The idea seem — if we take this route — to provide users with a dose of sense while browsing the vast iTunes catalog.
At this stage, however, we’ve no idea when we’ll see the benefits of Topsy’s technology in Apple’s products and services…