We’ve all by now heard about how Yahoo is trying to get some “cool” with a supposed $1 billion purchase of hip blogging platform Tumblr, but it may be a moot point if Tumblr’s users fail to stick around post-sale.

Microsoft and Facebook may be trying to make a move ahead of Yahoo, Tumblr may be inching ever closer to running out of cash, and (despite that) may not be afraid to play a little hardball. But here’s something you’re not hearing much about: Tumblr’s users are almost universally unhappy with the news that the site might get sold to Yahoo. And they may let their fingers do the talking, and the walking.

Do a search on Tumblr for “yahoo” and you get a stream of distress, interspersed with the occasional bit of helpless resignation, and some calls for activism. The voices of reluctant acceptance (usually because of the aforementioned cash situation) or anything like positivity are few and far between. No outright enthusiasm.

(Daddy!) See for yourself.

It’s a problem that extends to some of Tumblr’s oldest users.

“If Tumblr goes to Yahoo, I will seriously consider moving my personal blog to Medium, if that’s possible,” Alexia, co-editor over here at TC, told me. She’s had a blog on Tumblr since June 2009, and, while not part of that coveted 18-24 age bracket, is a significant representative of that other cadre of important users: digital influencers. “I don’t know exactly why, but my Tumblr is a part of my identity. And for whatever reason, I don’t want to identify with Yahoo.”

Some have tried to start a petition, with a goal of 5 million signatures although others are cynical about whether this will actually have any effect.

User attrition is not something to be dismissed, especially when it appears to be underpinned by wider usage trends on the site.

When I wrote a post in January about what might come next for Tumblr as a business (it focused on how it could make money; not how it might need to get sold because it doesn’t), I noted that in the prior month, December 2012, it had 167 million visitors and nearly 18 billion pageviews worldwide (Quantcast figures). The trend over the last six months are down, however: in the U.S. page views are down 21% to 5.3 billion, and uniques down 5% to 76 million. Worldwide the picture is better but still not growing: pageviews are down by 4%; uniques are down by 3%.

Not a sinking ship, but not a zippy little speedboat, either. Yahoo’s MySpace, indeed.

Image via Tumblr

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In February, the social network began testing the new layout on desktop with an option to shop immediately or get a reminder before the promotion ends. The interface also lets users decide if and when to share the offer with friends. We started seeing this on iOS in early April, and the company officially announced it a few weeks later. Now, the product is uniform across desktop and mobile, including Android.

Overall, the new design is likely to increase conversions on Offers posts because of the cleaner design and more prominent buttons to “Get offer” or “Shop now.” The “Remind Me” button available for some retailers working with Facebook directly allows companies to prompt users to redeem their offer at a later date through a notification on Facebook.

The new Offers also provide users with a better experience since they can now claim an offer without publicizing it to friends. After users select “Get Offer” or “Remind me,” they will have an option to “Tell Friends.” Their activity won’t be shared unless they click this button. Previously, whenever a user clicked “Get Offer,” it generated a story in friends’ feeds and in the recent activity section of their Timeline.

An additional benefit is the My Offers section accessible from a bookmark in the sidebar menu. This feature lets users access all of the offers they’ve claimed.

]]> http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/17/facebook-brings-new-offers-format-to-android-2/feed/ 0 http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/17/google-play-in-app-purchase-revenue-growth-jumps-7x-in-one-year-subscription-revenue-growing-2x-each-quarter/ http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/17/google-play-in-app-purchase-revenue-growth-jumps-7x-in-one-year-subscription-revenue-growing-2x-each-quarter/#comments Sat, 18 May 2013 02:18:13 +0000 admin http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/17/google-play-in-app-purchase-revenue-growth-jumps-7x-in-one-year-subscription-revenue-growing-2x-each-quarter/

Google held a session today at I/O 2013 about how to make money on Android, and in the initial few minutes it shared some updated stats around Google Play revenues and how those are progressing. Not surprisingly, the big growth is coming with in-app purchases, though Google’s recently launched subscription model is also making headway.

Google said that its in-app revenues through Play are up 700 percent since the same time last year, which is reflected in the top apps as listed by highest grossing titles in the Play rankings. Subscriptions, which just launched around 12 months ago, is also making headway, doubling inbound revenue each quarter according to Google. Some apps which use subscription as their exclusive revenue model are now cracking the top grossing list, like Pandora.

The momentum is still clearly behind in-app purchase, and as a result Google suggested that there’s good reason to consider that as a revenue model when building apps. Session host and Google Play Product Manger for Commerce and Monetization Ibrahim Elbouchikhi said that while the team likes to play a game called “Where’s Minecraft?” where they spot the world simulation sim from Notch, which continues to sit high on the charts despite being a one-time purchase paid app, the trend is overwhelmingly favoring freemium experiences.

Other key trends identified include a higher propensity to buy things on tablets vs. phones. Google framed this in light of its attempts to get developers to build tablet-optimized experience, saying that there’s a 1.7x higher purchase rate on tablets than on phones for apps. Also, updated versions of apps that take advantage of recent platform additions like the new capabilities unveiled at I/O this year have a 2.2x advantage at monetization vs. older versions, on average.

For Google, spelling that out is a way of it being able to show devs that it makes financial sense to invest the resources and efforts needed to convert apps to tablet versions, or to make them available with as many new features as possible that show off Android’s system improvements. And it does look to be having an effect on Google’s efforts to improve Android user monetization; Elbouchikhi said that average revenue per user (ARPU) among the Android install base is up 2.5x versus the same time last year.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

One year to the day of the troubled Facebook IPO, the climate for tech IPOs in the public markets is significantly less stormy, especially for companies in the enterprise space. Today, not one but two are debuting on New York stock exchanges. Business intelligence provider Tableau Software, trading as “DATA”, is one of the more highly anticipated tech IPOs of the year, and so far it has not disappointed. It priced its IPO at $31 per share, and it has popped 58% and is at nearly $49/share in early trading on the NYSE.

Meanwhile, Marketo, a cloud-based marketing services company, priced its IPO at $13 per share. It will be trading as MKTO on the NASDAQ exchange, but has yet to trade at the time of writing.

Taken together, the two are strong endorsements for the market for enterprise services and some of the still-emerging trends within it.

Tableau Software, as its stock ticker unsubtly hints, is aimed more at a big-data play, offering visualization and analytics that it says are easy enough for non-technical people to use. Up to now, it still offers the majority of its services as downloadable, on-premises software rather than as cloud-based apps.

Marketo is positioned as a software-as-a-service, and like a Salesforce for the marketing department, offers its various services — inbound marketing, lead management, social marketing, event management, instant CRM integration, sales dashboards, and marketing ROI reporting and analytics — all in a one-stop-in-the-cloud-shop.

Tableau Software is raising some $254.2 million at the $31/share price, after raising that IPO from an initial range of $23-26, with a valuation of $2 billion. Marketo, meanwhile, is raising just under $85 million for a $550 million valuation. (Incidentally, Facebook’s shares have lost some 30% of their value in the last year, and are at around $26.45/share at the moment.)

How does Tableau’s IPO compare to other high-profile enterprise listings? The money raised is just shy of the $260 million that enterprise security company Palo Alto Networks raised in July 2012. It is still a ways behind HR specialist Workday’s IPO in October 2012, which raised $637 million.

Tableau Software’s multi-billion IPO sets the stage for other multi-billion tech IPOs from the likes of Box and Twitter. Tableau had raised less than $40 million prior to this from NEA and Meritech (Crunchbase puts the total at only $15 million, but Geekwire says that NEA’s total investment in the company has been $29 million).

In contrast, Marketo has raised $108 million in six rounds, from investors that include Institutional Venture Partners, InterWest Partners, Mayfield Fund, Storm Ventures and Battery Ventures.

]]> http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/17/big-data-analytics-specialist-tableau-software-raises-254m-in-ipo-shares-pop-58-in-early-trading/feed/ 0 http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/16/enterprise-mobility-byod-startup-airwatch-adds-25m-from-accel-to-take-its-series-a-total-to-225m-as-it-preps-for-acquisitions/ http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/16/enterprise-mobility-byod-startup-airwatch-adds-25m-from-accel-to-take-its-series-a-total-to-225m-as-it-preps-for-acquisitions/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 18:29:19 +0000 admin http://socialshoppingnews.com/2013/05/16/enterprise-mobility-byod-startup-airwatch-adds-25m-from-accel-to-take-its-series-a-total-to-225m-as-it-preps-for-acquisitions/

AirWatch, the startup that helps businesses manage security and more on employees’ mobile devices, is today announcing that it has raised another $25 million, led by Accel with participation also from Insight Venture Partners. The funds come as part of an expanded Series A round, originally for $200 million, which the company announced with a splash in February during Mobile World Congress. This Series A is the first outside money raised by AirWatch, and values the company at just over $1 billion, according to sources.

Both AirWatch’s CEO, John Marshall, and Ryan Sweeney, the partner who led the round at Accel, tell TechCrunch that this latest expansion of the round was made at the same valuation. It comes just weeks after rival Good Technology raised a $50 million round and is preparing for an IPO.

As with the earlier $200 million, this latest injection will be used to help AirWatch build out its business, add more services, and quite possibly make some acquisitions along the way.

Marshall declined to say what areas acquisitions might be in, other than to note that they would be strategic investments to expand product lines and customers. “I think we will look very carefully at adjacent technology or tuck-in acquisitions,” he told TechCrunch. “I would not want to answer [who they are]. The three companies that I am looking at right now are all doing different things, and I don’t want to tip off our competitors.”

One area where AirWatch sees a particularly bright spot is in what Marshall refers to as “containerization of content,” in which services exist not just to manage whole devices but to be able to make more sophisticated services to partition and control particular services, such as a specific suite of enterprise apps or even one particular area of data. “The largest portion of our business is still in the enterprise mobility management space, including devices as well as apps,” he said. “The growing part of the business is around being able to secure the content in a digital locker. We see a lot of growth in extending that out within our customer base. I can’t emphasize how important this is in our strategy.” It will also lead AirWatch further also into desktop services, supporting not just mobile devices and platforms but the services and PCs used to run things when workers are not running around.

The funding, and AirWatch’s moves to grow, are signs of a consolidation afoot in the area of mobile enterprise services, specifically around mobile device management and the larger “BYOD” trend, where workers are following larger consumer trends using smartphones and tablets to do everything online, and are increasingly bringing in their devices to the office to help them work there, too. Up to now, there have been dozens of companies working in this space, both big (like AirWatch and Good) and small.

“We think this market is going to play out quickly,” said Marshall. “There are haves and have-nots, and we want to be the market leader and continue increasing that separation. Consolidation is absolutely on the cards.”

He also says that will play out not just in terms of services and winning business but also in terms of funding. “The VCs are getting pretty smart and are realizing that the winners are shaping up. That will cut off capital for those players who are not in the leading pack. Some will be acquired, and some will disappear.”

Indeed, Sweeney at Accel agrees on the investing front, but adds that the company is also gearing up to look for more mobile enterprise investments going forward.

“We’re actively looking in mobile enterprise,” he told TechCrunch. “This is the largest investment we’ve made in mobile enterprise to date but [the trend of] folks bringing phones and tablets from home to work and leaving with your PC in your pocket are still growing, so we think mobile enterprise will be a growth area for 3-5 years for sure.”

Marshall says AirWatch is currently adding 500 business per month, which would put its current client base at around 7,500, with some of the bigger names including Delta, Lowe’s; United Airlines; Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); Skanska; PepsiCo; Henry Ford Health System; Mount Sinai Medical Center; Best Buy and Abbott Laboratories. The company boasts four of the top five global Fortune companies; the top four global energy companies; six of the top 10 global airlines; six of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies; seven of the top 10 global consumer product companies; five of the top 10 global luxury goods companies; two of the top three global hotel groups; nine of the top 10 U.S. retailers and three of the top five U.S. medical device companies.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google I/O, the company’s sixth annual developer conference, got officially underway in San Francisco on Wednesday, and it was an eventful day. It took the company every minute of its epic three-hour keynote to unfurl a laundry list of announcements and updates, seemingly across every product category in its arsenal — from Android, Chrome and Search to Maps, Google+ and Hangouts — each with a fresh coat of paint. We even saw the arrival of Google’s very own subscription music service, today, which is already being touted as a potential Spotify killer.

Amidst Larry Page’s triumphant return to the stage (after addressing his much-discussed vocal issues yesterday), Google’s soaring stock price and sexy smartphone demos, it was easy to miss an important announcement concerning Google’s foray into a considerably less sexy market: Education. (And K-12 education, no less.)

Android Engineering Director Chris Yerga took the stage to introduce Google Play for Education, through which Google hopes to extend Play — its application and content marketplace for Android — into the classroom. The new store, which is scheduled to launch this fall, aims to simplify the content discovery process for schools, giving teachers and students access to the same tools that are now native to the Google Play experience.

Teachers will now be able to search for and recommend learning content by category, grade level, and a variety of other criteria, and will have the opportunity to discover content recommended by other educators, for example. What’s more, every piece of content served within its curated portal is pre-approved by educators before being posted, so that teachers can rest easy knowing the recommended content is quality and school-appropriate.

Google has already begun to recruit content partners, with NASA and PBS among those that have already signed on to make their content available to users when the store goes live this fall. Yerga said that the team plans to begin accepting content submissions from developers at some point this summer.

Today, Apple is far and away the de facto leader in the education space, but with its new educational app marketplace, Google is clearly positioning itself such that it can begin to make a real play at challenging that dominance. To that point, the real key to Google’s new product is the fact that it enables administrators to distribute applications to their entire team. If a teacher wants to shoot content to a couple hundred Android devices, they simply have to type in their group’s name and voila, Google will push that sucker out to everyone on the list.

Another important perk for cash-strapped teachers is that the marketplace doesn’t require them to use credit cards to purchase content. Instead, educators have the option to buy apps and content in bulk and charge those purchases to their account. These are important features for educational users, removing a great deal of the friction around acquiring learning content.

Not only that, but, while schools and educators are eager to bring apps and other digital learning tools into their classrooms, it’s critical for them to be able to manage and to bring some oversight to the content distribution process. Plus, the Android Marketplace, er, Google Play, has had a long-standing malware problem, so that extra layer of teacher control can help get schools over the hump.

While the penetration of Apple’s mobile devices into education is significant, when it comes to other hardware, IT departments don’t want to deal with the hassle of networking iDevices. Plus, Apple products are expensive — and especially for bulk orders, schools will want to turn elsewhere.

Where Google can have a real advantage over Apple is in its ability to combine Google Play for Education with Google Appls for Ed. Small businesses have been adopting Google’s productivity software in droves, and the interest has started to grow among school boards who want to introduce tablets into their classrooms and use Google Apps as the standard.

Together these two products can work hand in hand in the classroom, with each becoming more powerful as a result. In turn this could help create the incentive or leverage that it needs to begin attracting new users.

The biggest takeaway: If it weren’t already abundantly clear, Google is no longer just a search company. The company has been exerting tremendous effort to achieve a unification among its products, not only in terms of design, but in the way its products interact with each other. That is best demonstrated by the fact that Google products now touch just about everyone. In a sense, Google is becoming a utility provider — for both consumers and developers — and, in turn, a data company.

While Apple has long been focused most of its attention on design over the years, Google’s focus on utility has allowed it to build a massive infrastructure, collecting data from across a broad range of software products at a nearly unprecedented scale. For me, there’s no better testament to the utility and wide application of Google’s infrastructure than Education.

Naturally, in juxtaposition with sexy new smartphones and mobile technology, streaming music services and re-imagined social networks, Google’s work in Education tends to end up in the backseat. But, for this reason, Google has quietly (and quickly) gained noticeable traction in Education, thanks to the adaptation of its utilities and gadgets, like Google Apps and Chromebooks, to the learning market.

For example, in February, Google announced in February that Chromebooks are now in over 2,000 schools across the U.S. For awhile now, Apple has grabbed most of the attention in the education space thanks to the rapid adoption of iPads among schools and teachers. Furthermore, when we talk about Google having positioned itself as a provider of essential utilities, there’s probably no better than the company’s recent announcement that the entire country of Malaysia — that’s 10 million students, teachers and parents — will use Google Apps for Education as part of the country’s effort to improve its education system.

Through its Google Apps products, Google allows students and teachers to collaborate in realtime through Web apps, while using already-familiar tools like Google search and Gmail. The other part of this is, Google’s cloud, its infrastructure, allows it to operate its software products at scale without the traditionally high costs. For that reason, the company can make its educational products accessible to cash-strapped IT departments, for example.

With infrastructure that allows it to run its software at scale from the cloud, Google’s products become more flexible. That foundation behind it, with Google Apps having found penetration among small businesses, it adapted the suite to address similar productivity and collaboration inefficiencies in education.

Apply that to Google Play and pair it with Google Apps, and you can start to see why EdTech entrepreneurs and investors, when asked what the biggest trends are in education (that no one’s talking about yet), more than a few have said “start paying attention to Google.”

And with the impending arrival of Google Play for Education, if Google can start to get Android tablets into the hands of kids, it looks like they might just be onto something…

Google Developer page here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Skift, the travel industry-focused site that was launched in July 2012 by PaidContent founder Rafat Ali and Jason Clampet (who previously ran content and editorial partnerships at Frommers.com), is announcing today that it has raised $1.1 million in additional seed funding.

The new funding was led by Lerer Ventures, with participation from various funds and angel investors (skip to the end of this post for the full list). It brings the total amount that Skift has raised to $1.5 million.

Skift says that it will have more than half a million unique users this month, and that 25 percent of its traffic comes from mobile. It also says its readers are likely to be “executives and managers from leading brands” in travel and related industries, such as Expedia, Priceline, JetBlue, Starwood and others.

When I asked Ali how this growth compares to PaidContent, a news blog on the media industry that he launched in 2002 (it was acquired by Guardian Media in 2008 and is now owned by GigaOm), he said, “Just the velocity of how quickly you can make a mark, that’s changed a lot now.” Ali attributed much of the speed of Skift’s growth to social media — the company says 10 percent of its overall traffic now comes from Twitter.

Ali added that even though Skift’s topic is the travel industry, he thinks of it as a “business information” startup, rather than a travel startup. He said it’s a company where “media and data go hand-in-hand,” and where Skift’s news content can serve as a “funnel” to its other products.

That said, he acknowledged that the data side of Skift’s business is still early. In January, it released its first report, “13 Trends That Will Define Travel in 2013,” and in February it launched SkiftSocial, which offers social media data for travel brands. Ali said Skift will launch its first subscription data products next month.

“We have a big plan for the data part and we will launch these mini products along the way,” he said.

And like most online media companies (including TechCrunch), Ali plans to launch a Skift conference, though he said he wants to focus on “one flagship conference” that has multi-million dollar potential, rather than a bunch of smaller events.

Most of the Skift articles that I’ve read have been related to tech in some way, but Ali said the company’s coverage is broader than that, covering the full gamut of travel industry news, as well as other transportation trends like ridesharing.

“A lot of the traditional players in the travel industry are focused on specific verticals, while the silos are collapsing in travel, as they have in tech and finance and other industries,” he said. Ali also argued that a site covering business news (though to be clear, Skift wants to serve a consumer audience too) “doesn’t have to be boring”: “Travel is the most creative expression of human exploration. How can it be boring?”

Getting back to the funding, Ali said the company will use the money to double its staff from five to 10 and to move out of its current co-working space and into an office. The new funds in the round include Ironfire Angel, MESA+, Advancit Capital, and GrowLab/LX Ventures. The new angel investors include Jason Calacanis, Michael Cunniff, Duncan Jennings, Sean Keener, Shakil Khan, Martin Nisenholtz, Paul Noglows, and Michael Yavonditte.

Skift declined to say whether any of the previous angel investors have increased their investment with this new funding, but those past backers include Chris Ahearn, Luke Beatty, Gordon Crovitz, Craig Forman, Jim Friedlich, Tom Glocer, Vishal Gondal, Jason Hirschhorn, Peter Horan, Alan Meckler,Mohamed Nanabhay, Sanjay Parthasarathy, Amol Sarva, and Chris Schroeder.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Tracking oneself is all the rage, with quantified self devices like the Nike Fuelband, Jawbone Up, and Fitbit Flex enabling users to monitor and keep track of their physical activity over time. But what about tracking your mental concentration? A new device from a startup called Melon aims to help users monitor and improve their focus over time.

Using electroencephalography (EEG), the Melon headband monitors brain activity and can detect how well users are concentrating, and giving them feedback on how to improve. It does this by monitoring tiny electrical charges let off by neurons firing in the brain.

With three electrodes placed against the forehead, it can track this brainwave activity, and it has filtering technologies to eliminate noise frequencies that come in. Thanks to the NeuroSky chip embedded in the device, the Melon headband boasts that it can measure neural activity with 96 percent accuracy.

The headband is launching on Kickstarter, with a fairly modest goal of reaching $100,000 in pledges before going forward with a full production run of the product. For $79, the first 100 backers to the project will get a discount on the device, which is expected to cost $99. For a little more ($129), backers will be able to pick a customized color of the “badge” on the headband, or get one in annodized aluminum with a custom engraving ($159).

Kickstarter backers will also get access to the Melon mobile app, which will be available on iOS and Android devices, as a way to track their concentration. The headband has Bluetooth built-in so that users can connect their phones to the device and keep track of their activity.

The app is designed to enable users to monitor their concentration through a variety of activities, whether that means tracking them at work or during yoga or whatever. There are also a game through which they can work on achieving longer periods of focus.

Users can take note of the type of activity that they’re taking part in, as a way to track their focus levels over time. It also provides a way to track environment, feelings, and other details which might effect your concentration. During the activity, the app will store trends about how different behaviors affect your focus, and can provide tips and tricks to improve. It also has push notifications to let you know if your focus is slipping.

While the team has built its own app, it’s also hoping to court developers to build software and mobile applications that hook into its hardware. It’ll have an SDK available and will allow developers to have access to the focus and raw EEG data, as well as algorithms for different mental states.

Melon was created by Arye Barnehama and Laura Michelle Berman, as well as their lead electrical engineer Janus Ternullo. The team has raised a small round of funding to get it through the prototype stage, but is now turning to Kickstarter to help fund production and get units shipped.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Formspring, the pioneering Q&A site that allowed people to invite other internet users to “ask me anything” anonymously, is apparently back from the brink. In a tweet and a company blog post, Formspring announced that it has been “saved” and is now “under new management.”

Great news friends, Formspring has been saved and is now under new management. Get ready for some cool and exciting new features!!—
Formspring (@formspring) May 13, 2013

It was just two months ago that Formsping announced plans to shut down, with founder and CEO Ade Olonoh writing in a company blog post (which has now been deleted) that it had “been challenging to sustain the resources needed to keep the lights on.” At that time, the company planned to close down its online Q&A platform on March 31st and eliminate users’ access to their data on April 15th. The last-minute deal announced today indicates that the planned closure didn’t go through after all.

Details on who exactly is in charge now, and what Formspring has in store now that it’s sticking around, have not been provided. We’ve reached out to Olonoh and several Formspring investors for more information and will update with anything we hear.

It’d be good to see Formspring get another lease on life, as vague as the details around its resurrection are at the moment. The company raised a total of $14 million and garnered a huge following in its heyday. Though Formspring’s novelty wore off as young people moved on to other social networking trends, it’ll be interesting to see if they can somehow recapture its audience with a new spin on its old app — or something new entirely.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Lucky Sort, a Portland, Oregon-based startup behind a visualization and navigation engine called TopicWatch that helped to discover patterns in live data streams, has been acquired by Twitter. Terms of the deal were not immediately available, but the company has announced via its website that it will be shuttering its service in the coming months, and several members of the team will now be relocating to Twitter’s San Francisco offices to join the company’s “revenue engineering department.”

The startup had operated somewhat stealthily until early 2012, when word came out that it has raised a half-million seed round from Neu Venture Capital, Invite Investments (founders of Invite Media) and several angel investors, including Adam Riggs (Shutterstock.com), BankSimple co-founder Alex Payne, plus chaos theory physicist, quantitative trading pioneer, and roulette wheel hacker Norman Packard, Ph.D., who became the Chief Science Officer at the firm.

Packard is not joining Twitter, but CEO Noah Pepper, Jesse Smith, and Daniel Fennelly, are moving to San Francisco.

With the company’s first product, TopicWatch, users could sift through social media, government filings, news and commentary in real time to find, summarize and analyze any text-based content. It was more than a “social listening” or “sentiment analysis” firm – those were only subsets of its overall capabilities.

Analysis of Twitter data was also only part of what this platform could accomplish, as well.

In effect, Lucky Sort was a big data play – it used NLP (natural language processing) techniques to discover information from huge, unstructured data sets. What made it unique was its ability to derive structure without having to first define a database of nouns, verbs, etc. as traditionally would be the case with NLP. Instead, Lucky Sort was moved towards data mining through statistics rather than input ontologies.

Last November, the engine was put to practical use through a partnership with the social network for traders, StockTwits. The relationship offered the entire historical database of StockTwits (everything that had been tweeted or shared within the community), as well as a real-time feed coming into its service. These data sets were made available in Lucky Sort’s analysis interface, allowing investors to come in and examine how chatter in the StockTwits community has correlated with price action.

This could produce visualizations (like the one below), which could be operated via touch – including on the iPad.

Today, Lucky Sort says that three of its team members are headed to Twitter, and a plan to transition customers off of its platform is underway. Asked what he meant by Twitter’s “revenue engineering department,” Pepper would only say, “it’s where we’ll be shoveling coal into the money printing machine.”

However he did say that as far as he knew, Twitter is not interested in getting into the finance vertical itself. “They wanted our technology and expertise for other things,” he says.

Lucky Sort had raised a total of $600,000 before the acquisition, with $100,000 coming from Howard Lindzon, StockTwits CEO and co-founder.

The startup joins other recent Twitter acquisitions, including another previously data-focused service called Ubalo, as well as others like We Are Hunted (which led to Twitter Music), Vine, Crashlytics, Bluefin Labs, and more.

The company’s official announcement is below:

Lucky Sort acquired by Twitter!

Two years ago I started Lucky Sort with several friends. Our goal was to make huge document sets easier to analyze, summarize and visualize by building elegant and user friendly tools for text analysis.

Today I’m very excited to announce that our journey has entered a new phase: Lucky Sort has been acquired by Twitter!

Several of us will be moving to San Francisco to join Twitter’s revenue engineering department, so if you’re in the neighborhood and want to talk about text mining or data visualization give us a shout.

We’ll be helping current customers transition off our system in the coming months such that we can focus fully on our future at Twitter.

In building Lucky Sort we had an enormous amount of support from friends, employees, advisors and investors. It has been uplifting to have so many people help us and it highlighted just how much business is a social endeavour.

Best,

Noah Pepper
Chief Executive Officer
Lucky Sort

This story is developing….

Correction: An earlier version of this post said Packard was joining Twitter. He is not. 

Article courtesy of TechCrunch