Topsy Labs

Topsy Labs was a social search and analytics company based in San Francisco, California. The company was a certified Twitter partner and maintained a comprehensive index of tweets, numbering in the billions, which it used to provide real-time search capability and social analytics. In 2013, Topsy Labs was acquired by Apple.

History

Topsy Labs was founded in 2007 by Vipul Ved Prakash, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Gary Iwatani, and Justin Fagnani-Bell. The company launched its Twitter search engine in 2009, which allowed users to search and analyze the Twitter stream for trends, influential voices, and sentiments.

In 2011, Topsy Labs introduced Topsy Pro Analytics, a subscription-based service that allowed businesses to analyze a range of Twitter data, including the growth of tweet volume over time, the reach of any term, and sentiment scoring.

In December 2013, Topsy Labs was acquired by Apple for a reported $200 million. Following the acquisition, the Topsy.com website was shut down in December 2014.

Products and Services

Topsy Labs offered a variety of products and services, primarily focused on social media analytics. These included:

• Topsy Pro Analytics: A subscription-based service that provided businesses with the ability to analyze Twitter data.
• Topsy API: Allowed developers to access Topsy's data and integrate it into their own applications.
• Topsy Social Index: A measure of the popularity of a term, hashtag, or link on Twitter, updated in real-time.

Legacy

Topsy's technology and data are believed to have been integrated into Apple's services, including Siri and Spotlight Search. The acquisition also marked one of Apple's first major forays into social media analytics.

See Also

• Social media analytics
• Twitter
• Apple Inc.

References

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