Twitter acquires Trendrr to get a better handle on tweets about TV

Twitter has acquired Trendrr, a data analysis company, to better leverage users’ tweets about television to draw in more advertisers.

Trendrr analyzes data from social media sites such as Twitter to help businesses grow their brands. The company’s products help networks, television studios, brands and media agencies use the insights it gathers to grow, Trendrr explains on its website. Some of the company’s clients include ABC, MTV, Telemundo and Univision.

Twitter confirmed the acquisition in a tweet, saying that Trendrr would help the social network “build great tools for the rest of the TV ecosystem.” However, the company could not be immediately reached to comment further on the deal. Terms were not disclosed.

Television is becoming increasingly important to Twitter, and information that the service gathers around users’ TV activity could help to drive future advertising deals.

The company recently announced the national availability of its television ad-targeting program to let TV marketers push out branded content to people on Twitter if those users are tweeting about certain shows.

A study previously released by the market-research company Nielsen suggested that such a program could give the social network a revenue boost. The study’s findings showed that broadcast TV tune-in rates led to increased activity on Twitter, and vice versa.

Twitter’s real-time data about users’ activity on the site was what made the social network uniquely compelling to Trendrr, CEO Mark Ghuneim said on the company’s blog.

“We think we can help amplify even stronger the power of that connection to the moment inside of Twitter,” he said.

Curatorr, the company’s chief Twitter product, “will work with media companies, marketers, and display ecosystem partners to create compelling user experiences,” Ghuneim explained.

Twitter, therefore, could use Trendrr’s technology both to develop new products to encourage users to tweet around TV and other brands, and also drive more advertising arrangements based on data gathered by Trendrr.

Trendrr said it will honor its existing contracts for its Trendrr.TV service, but that it would not establish new ones going forward.

Twitter faces mounting pressure to further monetize its site as it competes with rivals such as Facebook, with a possible IPO also looming. The company’s current suite of advertising products includes promoted tweets, which lets marketers place promotional tweets into certain users’ feeds.

Twitter claims to have roughly 200 million active users.

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ARM acquires Sensinode, a vendor of software for 'Internet of Things'

ARM has acquired Sensinode in Finland in its bid to provide technology and processors for the "Internet of things," consisting of a variety of low-power and inexpensive devices including sensors communicating with the Internet and one another.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Privately-held Sensinode has led to the creation of the 6LoWPAN and CoAP standards for low-cost, low-power devices to connect to the Internet, ARM said Tuesday.

CoAP, for Constrained Application Protocol, enables web services for constrained devices and networks, while integrating with the Web architecture and HTTP. 6LoWPAN is a standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force first published in 2007, which optimizes IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) for use with low-power, low-bandwidth communication technologies. The technologies reduce the complexity and overhead of key Internet and Web protocols to make them easy to handle by small footprint devices.

ARM is adding Sensinode technologies to its mbed project, an industry collaboration to deliver open source hardware and software building blocks for rapid development of intelligent connected devices. IMS Research said in October that the Internet of Things will have 28 billion Internet-connected devices by the end of 2020.

ARM in Cambridge, U.K., has said it is committed to enabling a standards-based Internet of Things where devices of all types and capabilities are connected through interoperable Internet protocols and Web services.

The company, which licenses the designs for the chips that go into a majority of smartphones, is now targeting the embedded market, providing free software libraries, hardware designs and online tools for professional rapid prototyping of products built around ARM microcontrollers.

ARM will continue to offer Sensinode's NanoStack and NanoService products, built around 6LoWPAN and CoAP, commercially to existing and new customers, it said.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service.
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