Twitter buys Web analytics firm

Twitter said Thursday it had bought Smallthought Systems, a small Web analytics firm.

"As we grow, analytics becomes an increasingly crucial part of improving our service," Kevin Weil, the head of analytics at the micro-blogging service, said in a blog post.

Weil said the San Francisco-based Twitter was particularly interested in a tool from Smallthought called Trendly, which allows users to sort through analytics data from Google.

The four-member team at Smallthought "will focus on integrating ideas from Trendly into our current tools and building innovative realtime products for our future commercial partners," Weil said.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Twitter has made a number of purchases recently including Cloudhopper, a small SMS technology company, and Atebits, a company that developed an iPhone program for Twitter.

Twitter, which was launched in March 2006, allows users to exchange 140-character-or-less messages known as "tweets."

(c) 2010 AFP