Yesterday, TechCrunch broke the news that Google had acquired Twitter sentiment analysis and recommendation engine fflick. Today, YouTube posted its blog that it, a subsidiary of Google, had actually done the acquiring.
According to the post, YouTube will be using the “technical talent, design instincts and entrepreneurial spirit of the Fflick team” in its effort to roll out more features “that help you enjoy and discover new videos to watch.”
When the news first came out about Google acquiring fflick, speculation ranged from Google’s desire to predict box office hits to using the service to perform analytics. Now, it looks like Electronista’s prediction was closer to reality – YouTube will use the service in helping with features like YouTube leanback, which attempts to create a personalized stream of content for users. YouTube explains more in its blog post:
We’ve always believed that there are great conversations happening all the time off of YouTube.com, and that commentary has the potential to enrich your experience when watching and discovering video on YouTube itself. So today we’re excited to announce we’ve acquired Fflick, a talented team that analyzes social media data to surface great content and the discussions around it.
According to the post, YouTube content is shared around the Internet to the tune of 400 tweets per minute, with “over 150 years worth of YouTube” watched on Facebook every day.
Using a service like fflick, YouTube could harness all of the surrounding commentary and data to better personalize streaming content. Leanback wasn’t the only recommendation service launched by YouTube last year. In July, the company also began offering a music recommendation service. Later, in November, it began testing a video recommendation service called “YouTube Topics”.
What will we see next, YouTube?
