Twitter and IBM have announced a partnership to allow companies to use Twitter’s social data with IBM’s various enterprise software platforms.
In the announcement, Twitter explains that its collection of tweets is a vast and untapped source of “ideas, opinions and debates taking place around the world on almost any topic at any moment in time.”
IBM would be able to take advantage of this data though eetablished tools, such as its Watson AI, to give businesses useful information about questions like what consumers like best about certain products, or why a prodfuct may be particularly popular in a given region. Ginni Rometty, IBM President and CEO, says:
“Twitter provides a powerful new lens through which to look at the world – as both a platform for hundreds of millions of consumers and business professionals, and as a synthesizer of trends. This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data.”
Twitter data will now be available in IBM’s Watson Analytics, a platform that takes advantage of IBM’s ‘cognitive technology’ to interpret data through natural language and machine learning technologies – its supposed to understand people, not just numbers.
IBM says thousands of its consultants will be trained to help businesses take advantage of the new integration.
It’s smart venture by the two companies – Twitter contains more public opinions on products and businesses than any other single platform, and IBM has some of the best technology to understand those in a meaningful way.
Though IBM is the only enterprise partner now, it’ll be interesting to see how long this remains an exclusive deal. IBM is an established name, but there are perhaps bigger names today, like Amazon Web Services.
The move also makes sense, however, as Twitter tries to find new sources of revenue, and follows the company’s introduction of its Fabric platform to give developers more power over what they can do with Twitter data.
➤ Change the way business decisions are made [Twitter Blog]
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