Stefan Mileschin

The fruit themed purveyor of gadgets to the wealthy, known as Apple, has bought social media search and analytics startup Topsy.

The move has surprised the tame Apple press who had no idea that that Jobs’ Mob was interested in social notworking.

According to Reuters the company is “hardware focused” and seems to have forgotten all its fulsome praise of the iOS. However now that Apple has bought the outfit, Reuters suddenly thinks that there are lots of reasons why the deal makes sense.

“The California gadget maker has been increasingly making it easier for people to share photos, videos and news through its devices and directly to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter,” Reuters advertised.

But Reuters was also troubled as to why Apple would not say why it bought the company.

Topsy makes its dosh analysing Twitter data and providing insights into current sentiment on a variety of topics. It appears that Apple paid $200 million.

So far Apple's only moves into social media involved Ping, which is a music-cantered social sharing network. Ping ponged and was shut down.

However it seems that Apple wants Topsy so it can tell what its customers are doing and want to buy. It could be used, for example to serve up apps to customers based on an in depth knowledge of their personal data.

http://news.techeye.net/business/apple-grows-like-topsy