Two years after it acquired Topsy, a San Francisco-based firm offering Twitter analytics to companies, Apple has officially shut down the service.
“We’ve searched our last tweet,” Topsy has noted on its official Twitter account. Topsy’s website redirects to an Apple support page detailing how users can use search features on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Although they broke the story, it looks like The Wall Street Journal were wondering the same thing themselves. The result is an excellent breakdown of Apple’s major acquisitions in 2013. Unfortunately, it doesn’t shed much light on why Apple bought Topsy, but it does show Cupertino’s areas of interest.
Apple has bought Topsy, a San Francisco-based firm that offers Twitter analytics to companies. The deal has closed at over $200 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“It’s unclear how Apple plans to use Topsy,” says the report. “There may be opportunities to link Topsy’s technology with Apple’s iTunes Radio, an online-streaming-music competitor to Pandora Media Inc. and Spotify AB. One possible scenario would use data from Topsy to alert listeners to songs that are trending or artists being discussed on Twitter.”
A report from a few months ago said Apple was beefing up its iAd team prior to the launch of iTunes Radio. Topsy’s expertise in social marketing could certainly come in handy when trying to sell iAds.