Twitter 'to Buy' Social Media TV Analyst Bluefin Labs

Reports from the US say Twitter has acquired Bluefin Labs - which tracks social media conversations about TV programs - in a deal worth between $50m and $100m.

The news follows Twitter's recent agreement with Nielsen to produce a new metric called the 'Nielsen Twitter TV Rating', covering the reach on Twitter of conversation about TV programmes. Analysts believe the Bluefin acquisition will extend this initiative, by highlighting which advertisers might spend money to improve their social media status, or to maintain a place at the top of the rankings.

Cambridge, MA-based Bluefin was founded in 2008 by Chairman Deb Roy and CTO Michael Fleischman, building on their cognitive science and machine learning research at the MIT Media Lab. Their firm's flagship Bluefin Signals technology platform analyzes comments posted on social media sites about US TV programs and commercials, and clients tap into this data to inform the buying and selling of TV space.

Last month, the company appointed Scott Grunther, former SVP of Nielsen's TV and online ad effectiveness measurement arm Nielsen IAG, to help TV networks use social media TV insights to drive ad sales and programming decisions.

According to Business Insider, the acquisition is believed to be Twitter's largest yet, although the deal has not yet been confirmed by either company.

Last weekend, Bluefin Labs' data found that the Super Bowl XLVII broke social TV records, with more than 30.6 million social media comments - 27.7 million public comments on Twitter against 2.8 million on Facebook.

Web sites: www.twitter.com and www.bluefinlabs.com .