• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 2, 2013

Apple has acquired Topsy, a company that develops tools for analyzing Twitter traffic and tweets. The analytics company is one of the few that have access to the data behind the real-time messages.

Topsy supports data about how information spreads across Twitter, providing marketers with a better understanding of how to reach consumers through tweets. The company has been working on expanding its access to Twitter data. In September it released the ability to access social data back to the first tweet sent in May 2006.

The company claimed that mining the tweets helps to track consumer sentiment. Topsy now indexes about 425 billion pieces of content from photos to linked pages. The platform analyzes the amount of times Twitter users cite a specific piece of content or topic.

Apple could use Topsy's trend data to target consumers using devices running iOS such as iPhone, iPad and Mac computers and laptops. The analytics company has filed for more than a dozen patents related to social networks. One patent published in 2012 estimates the influence of subjects based on a subject graph, while another focuses on attribution of reputation to data sources.

During Apple's latest 2013 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook talked about new product categories and acquisitions. In fact the company made 15 acquisitions in 2013, an average of one every three to four weeks. Most are small companies. Some of those include AlgoTrim, Cue, Embark, HopStop, PrimeSense, WifiSLAM, and Locationary.