Sources confirmed late Monday that Apple has acquired social-media analytics firm Topsy Labs, Inc.
Topsy specializes in analyzing the global conversation on Twitter. Its tools can decipher how often a term is tweeted, find an influential person on a specific subject, or measure the exposure of an event or campaign.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported in detail on the acquisition, Topsy is one of a select few Twitter Inc. partners with access to the “fire hose” — “the full stream of tweets since 2006, which now average roughly 500 million a day.”
From there, Topsy analyzes this information and then “resells it” to customers.
As we understand it, Apple paid an estimated $200 million for Topsy, likely as a means to boost the company’s mobile ad targeting capabilities through apps and perhaps even iTunes radio.
Apple had no formal comment on the purchase other than to confirm that it’s a done deal.