IBM just upped it s social media analytics game by announcing a data partnership with Twitter.
The partnership will allow IBM’s newly launched Watson Analytics to give its users access to the entire firehose of Twitter data, which they can use to scan for trends, identify customer service issues, and evaluate customer sentiment.
Till now, IBM had lacked a real contender in the social media marketing platforms race, but the Twitter partnership changes that status. Watson Analytics is a powerful, very comprehensive analytics platform, and access to Twitter data makes it even more attractive for enterprises looking for a unified data solution.
In addition to providing Twitter analytics through Watson, IBM will also develop a set of enterprise applications designed to improve business decisions, specifically for sales, marketing and customer service professionals. The Twitter data firehose will also be available to IBM’s Global Services agency which provides digital data and marketing solutions to enterprise clients.
“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,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and CEO in a press release. “This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data.”
While IBM will definitely benefit from the added data access, it’s Twitter that is scoring the bigger win here. With an enterprise level partnership, Twitter is positioning itself and its data as a crucial source for business decision making. It’s no longer enough to manually scan hashtags and trends, Twitter wants to make its data actionable and hence more valuable to businesses. Ever since it took ownership of its own data firehose access provider by acquiring Gnip, Twitter has has a big incentive for monetizing its data, and it can finally do that through this IBM partnership.
“IBM brings a unique combination of cloud-based analytics solutions and a global services team that can help companies utilize this truly unique data,” said Chris Moody, Vice President of Twitter Data Strategy in a press release. “Companies have had successes with Twitter data – from manufacturers more effectively managing inventory to consumer electronic companies doing rapid product development.”
