Google Buys Twitter Sentiment Analyzer fflick To Support “Contextual Discovery” Google has acquired fflick, according to TechCrunch. The price is reportedly $10 million. Is it a talent acquisition, a tool acquisition or both? It’s both. Using Twitter, the fflick service analyzes and organizes comments about movies: overall, most recent, positive, what your friends have said and so on. This is a very interesting service and it’s easy to see why Google might want it. Google developed recommendations service HotPot to help improve Local (after the failed attempt to acquire Yelp). However fflick can be extended across domains and verticals potentially. Stepping back one should probably see this acquisition supporting Google’s effort to develop “contextual discovery” or “search with searching.”
While Bing and Blekko incorporate Facebook Likes from my network into search to make it more personal and social, Google is trying to do something equally social but with a different expression or user experience. Related posts: Bubbalon:) Research.ly is Twitter search and discovery on steroids. Sysomos | Business Intelligence for Social Media, Monitoring and Analytics. Upprdwnr | home. Analyze Words.