Twitter-based startup TweetUp has acquired Twidroid and Popurls to help bolster its search and advertising platform that identifies the best tweets and users from across the Web based on keyword searches.
TweetUp combines sophisticated relevance algorithms with a bidding system to raise user-profiles to the top of search results and make it easy to acquire new followers, and is being used on several high-traffic sites such as TechCrunch, BusinessInsider and Topix.com. Though plans are uncertain as to what TweetUp has up its sleeve with the new acquisitions, the company said recently that tweeters will soon be able to bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to search engines on the Internet.
In addition, TweetUp has inked search agreements with various companies, including Twitter clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic. It makes sense that TweetUp would want a native client of its own, and therefore chose Twidroid since it’s one of the most popular Android-based clients out there. The company will likely bake its search solution into Twidroid to have something it has complete control over, and the company has indicated that various clients and websites will bring search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than 100 million impressions a month.
Popurls, which aggregates items from the New York Times, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Flickr and other sites also makes sense for the company’s search plans. Aggregating links from traditional Web content to social media sites to real-time content from Twitter could make for an interesting combination when integrated into TweetUp’s other plans. We’ll definitely be keeping out eyes on this one.
