X
Business

IBM, Twitter form data partnership

The two companies are planning to integrate Twitter data into enterprise apps, Watson as well as various industry specific uses.
Written by Larry Dignan, Contributor

IBM and Twitter forged an alliance that would give Big Blue access to the social networks data and expose it to enterprise applications.

The two parties announced the data partnership that will ultimately allow the Watson cognitive computing system access to Twitter data. In a blog post, Twitter noted the following:

This announcement has been years in the making. Twitter’s data efforts started when we first made our public data available for analysis. Since then, we’ve made great progress in getting social data into the hands of decision makers. Our acquisition of Gnip earlier this year was an important milestone because it gives us an enterprise-grade platform that delivers more than 15 billion social activities per day to a vibrant ecosystem of customers and partners who are innovating using this data.

The collaboration between IBM and Twitter will revolve around the following:

  • Twitter data integration with IBM's cloud-based analytics services such as Watson Analytics.
  • Enterprise applications from the two parties. The first effort will revolve around integrating Twitter data with IBM's ExperienceOne customer engagement suite.
  • Consulting services that will implement industry specific uses for Twitter data in verticals such as banking, retail, travel and transportation.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but do highlight how Twitter's business model could evolve based on the value of back-end data as well as advertising. Other companies such as Dataminr also collaborate with Twitter to surface data and actionable information. Also see:

Q&A with Dataminr CEO Ted Bailey: Making Twitter's firehose actionable

Editorial standards