IBM and Twitter Sign Pact to Turn Tweets Into Better Business Decisions

Computing goliath IBM has signed a deal with Twitter to use tweets to make smarter business decisions.

The agreement will let IBM’s 10,000 consultants access the some 500 million tweets the social-media firm sees each day, the Wall Street Journal reports. Together, the companies will build new services to assist various industries in gauging public opinion on brands, products and ideas, as well as forecast prospects for business development.

“Businesses have only scratched the surface of what is possible,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told an event announcing the accord in Las Vegas.

IBM has been keen to collect on innovations in the world of big data, this summer announcing a deal with Apple to develop new applications for corporate clients. Meanwhile, Twitter has also been intent on beefing up its revenue sources, buying data firm Gnip this spring to give its advertisers better analytics packages.

[WSJ]