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The Topsy API is the best way to surface "trend" type data from Twitter. I'm a little confused as to why Apple would make this acquisition, but of the companie
by brandnewlow 13y ago
The Topsy API is the best way to surface "trend" type data from Twitter. I'm a little confused as to why Apple would make this acquisition, but of the companies doing things in the "make the Twitter firehose accessible" space, Topsy has had the best product for some time.
- andrewhillman 13y agoI think they will use this to tweak AppStore app ranking algorithm. User app reviews only go so far.
- codyb 13y agoI was also thinking possibly using this data and other streams to possibly give Siri the ability to answer more accurately questions like "Siri, what is going on in the United States today?" (Or where I live, work, etc). Just in case Siri was already really good I gave it a check but it was mostly lame USA facts on twitter, and a news reel of links to a somewhat better representation of an answer to the question but mostly foreign relations and bigger picture stories where the USA is mentioned explicitly. I have a feeling things like "A catastrophic tornado in Tennessee…" which only mentions that state probably wouldn't come up as readily yet. And that is definitely an incredibly hard question to tackle too.
- hkmurakami 13y agoTheir expertise could be used in any number of ways in Apple's various server side services imo.
- gsharma 13y agoI was confused too. However, I think they are going to bring in-app search (like Android) to iOS. They can always auto index the apps on the device and then send the data to their servers. Alternatively they may also relase APIs for developers to push user specific content to their servers to index items (more like ElasticSearch or AWS CloudSearch.) $200M is a lot of money to just improve the app store search. They might end up using it for that too.
- Nerdfest 13y agoSadly, the most likely reason these days would be for more patent ammunition.