IBM teams with Twitter for social media big data analysis

IBM and Twitter have announced a partnership that will see Big Blue bring its big data analytics capabilities to the social site to help give firms more data insights.


The platform is hosted in the cloud on IBM’s BlueMix platform and is designed to help businesses gain a better understanding of their data by incorporating social media data, which should improve decision making.

By plugging this into IBM’s Watson Analytics platform, firms can cross-reference social data to other data streams from sales charts to weather data.

IBM said it already has 4,000 staff trained up to show clients how to use the platform and that 100 early testers using the services have already seen benefits.

Twitter said that the move would help businesses incorporate social feedback data into their decision making.

“So much of business decision making relies on internal data such as sales, promotion and inventory,” said Chris Moody, vice president of digital strategy at Twitter. “Now with Twitter data, customer feedback can easily be incorporated into decision making.”

Moody said this will make it possible for firms to have a clearer insight into why products sold well, or didn't, and how to act on this information.

"Twitter represents an enormous public archive of human thought that captures the ideas, opinions and debates taking place around the world on almost any topic at any moment in time," he said in a blog post.

"While companies have long listened to what their customers are saying on Twitter, complex enterprise decisions often require input from a lot of different systems. IBM’s expertise is in integrating complex systems and data to make better decisions."

IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty said the partnership was a great example of IBM bringing its powerhouse computing to new areas such as social media.

"This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data. This is the latest example of how IBM is reimagining work," she said.

The move is another tie-up between IBM and other technology players in the market, after its recent deal with Apple to launch enterprise-focused apps for iPhones and iPads, and the launch of a BlackBerry tablet that contains IBM technology.