When news reached us at The Practice that Apple had acquired Topsy, an analytics start up, we were curious as to how this purchase might benefit. With a staggering price tag of $200 million, we wonder how the company will feature in Apple’s future.

Purchasing Topsy is an interesting move for Apple, because the company focuses on providing analytics of Twitter data. But we can see its appeal- the start up just recently launched the ability to search Twitter’s entire archive, something that hardly any other analytics tools offer insight into. The San Francisco-based firm has since become known as the only tool to allow access to the Twitter “firehose” for this precise feature. Now, the site’s complete archive of over 425 billion tweets, videos, images, posts and pins since its inception in 2006 will be available to the public. It was also the go-to tool, used by Twitter’s political index to track public sentiment in last year’s presidential race. Then in August, Topsy opened its API to developers to enable use of Twitter data in other applications. We can see huge advantage in being able to use Topsy in marketing campaigns, to track relevant historic data and for in depth search purposes. We certainly think this acquisition signals Apple’s move towards social- but not just for the company to see how consumers are responding to a new product, but more as an aid for the company’s venture into social TV. Reportedly, the firm are working on a new smart TV- it’s this that could benefit from Topsy’s data for advertisers, and data generated from Twitter as a second screen for viewers.

So is this what Apple also sees in Topsy? Jesse Redniss, chief strategy officer at Mass Relevance, argues that Topsy’s access to Twitter data could certainly help Apple with future content recommendations. “Access to Twitter’s firehose offers the ability to look back at trending content, especially when it comes to staples within Apple’s business such as TV, music and apps,” he said. Indeed, we imagine Apple’s services including Siri, iTunes, and particularly Apple TV, as we stressed above, all benefiting. And in the general scheme of things, it can’t hurt that Apple now has control over one of the largest interest graphs online, showing the importance of big data. Last year alone, for example, analyst firm, Gartner reported $28 billion spent on big data technologies, with a projected spend of $230 billion to be spent from now until 2016. And if we look at Google and Microsoft for instance, both companies have added to this trend in the past, with search engine, Bing, and products such as Gmail, Google + and YouTube respectively. Apple has largely been left out, only counting Siri amongst its data capabilities. And so as a technology company for which devices are only now just a part of the bigger picture, acquiring Topsy makes sense if it wishes to compete.

Do you use Twitter analytics tools to manage brand insights, or even just for personal purposes? And do you think Topsy will be important for Apple’s future, or merely just another acquisition to add to the company’s expanding list? We’d love to hear your opinions as always, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.