Business Insider broke the story Monday, reporting that this is Twitter's biggest acquisition to date. Twitter and Bluefin both confirmed the acquisition today on their respective blogs.
For Twitter this is proof that the company is doubling down on its efforts in social TV. In December, Twitter partnered with Nielsen to create the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating using the SocialGuide platform Nielsen acquired in November 2012.
Bluefin's existing suite of tools offers similar social analysis.
Twitter says that while it "intends to honor existing Bluefin customer contracts," it won't sell Bluefin's product suite beyond the contract. Instead, it plans to use Nielsen's SocialGuide platform "to help brands, agencies, and networks fully understand the combined value of Twitter and TV."
Twitter is having huge success in TV. The Super Bowl alone generated 24.1 million tweets and the social network was mentioned in half of all Super Bowl ads.
More to the point — advertisers are open to using Twitter as a metric for engagement/future ad buys.
A Big Win for Social TV, a Huge Win for Twitter
This time last year, there were at least half a dozen startups trying to do social TV analytics. I got the sense from a number of advertisers and television executives that doubling down on using social analytics for ad buys or ad research would only happen once it was clear what services would survive and what services would fizzle out.Now that two of the leading players — Bluefin and SocialGuide — have been acquired, it will be much easier to get executive level buy-in around these services. The fact that Twitter is now actively investing in social TV proves to networks and advertisers that it's a platform that deserves attention.
Dan Neely, the CEO of Networked Insights, another big social analytics company, thinks the acquisition "validates the value of social analytics." Neely told Mashable, "Twitter needs to prove to advertisers that they are are a great place to spend media dollars at scale, so Bluefin makes perfect sense for them." Neely noted that we've seen this kind of acquisition before, namely when Google acquired Urchin in 2005 to build out what became known as Google Analytics.
For Twitter, having an ownership stake in this type of technology has huge potential. Within minutes of the Super Bowl blackout, brands including Oreo took to Twitter to promote viral marketing spots or to buy Twitter ads.
Imagine how much better and faster that process could be if Twitter had the ability to let its advertisers access more acute data and research?
When I first saw a demo of Bluefin's product during the summer of 2011, it was clear that, as a measurement tool, it had great potential for advertisers and networks. I can't wait to see what happens now that the company is part of Twitter.
What do you think of Twitter's decision to double down on social TV? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of Alan Klim, Flickr, composite by Christina Warren, Mashable
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