Google has bought social analytics startup SocialGrapple for an undisclosed sum, as the internet giant looks to increase its focus on social media after the launch of Google+.
Launched a year ago by Andrey Petrov, SocialGrapple is a Twitter analytics tool that tracks changes in a user’s social graph and sends users interactive charts and email reports reflecting the data.
The small US-based firms lets users track a detailed list of anyone who mentions their brand in the Twitter ecosystem.
Alongside archiving every tweet matching your keyword and visualizing your growth of volume, SocialGrapple also tracks every unique user who mentions the keyword.
By viewing reports of new unique mentioners, users will know when somebody learns about their brand for the first time.
Google could integreate social grapple into its Google+ social network. For example, one glaring hole in Google+ has been the ability to analyze users; social graphs could be a huge boon to Google+ users who plan to launch business accounts on the platform.
In addition, Petrov’s skills would be well-suited to this task within Google, where the resources will enable him to build social analytics on a scale enjoyed by the likes of Salesforce.com, which acquired Radian6 this year for analytics, and VMware, which bought Socialcast for social analytics.
When Google makes its platform available to business brands, it could also charge them for analytics to better target consumers with their marketing messages. Twitter and Facebook offer similar analytics tools for marketers.
In the meantime, as with so many other social services Google and Facebook buy and uproot, SocialGrapple is shutting down.
Petrov said all payment subscriptions have been canceled and users must download their SocialGrapple data by Nov 8 2011, or it will be deleted.
