Apple's Topsy social search engine tweets out its own demise
Apple snapped up the would-be Google of Twitter search about two years ago for reportedly at least $200 million, and it's never been quite clear outside of Apple what the company did with its purchase. However, now that the Topsy webpage redirects you to an Apple Support page on using search on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, speculation is that Topsy's technology has been woven into iOS and perhaps Siri search. Apple was also thought to be exploiting Topsy's social media smarts and tightness with Twitter to strengthen recommendation capabilities within the Apple App Store and iTunes.
While Topsy's claim to fame had been indexing Tweets to make them more searchable, the company itself hadn't tweeted anything out since before Apple acquired it.
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Topsy's Twitter bio now reads: "Every tweet ever published. Previously at your fingertips."
TechCrunch reports that Topsy's demise could be foreseen a year ago when those with premium accounts were no longer able to renew them, and the assumption now is that all such accounts have expired.
Outside of its $3B Beats Electronics buyout last year, the Topsy deal was one of Apple's bigger dollar purchases over the past few years.
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