Twitter and IBM: A year of changing how business decisions are made

A year ago at IBM Insight 2014, we announced our partnership with IBM to transform how businesses and institutions understand their customers, markets and trends — and inform every business decision. Since then, IBM has worked with many of the world’s largest companies to apply the unique insights that can be found in Twitter data to their most critical business challenges.

Insights from Twitter data provide companies with a unique perspective into the world around them. The breadth of real-time conversations taking place on Twitter every day, combined with a deep historical archive of public Tweets that spans nine years, gives analysts the ability to ask a key question.

What’s possible when you know what the world is thinking about any topic at any time?

By applying IBM’s deep industry knowledge and analytics capabilities to this rich data set — in real time — businesses can quickly understand key changes in their arenas and take action.

Brazilian media conglomerate Globo worked with IBM and Twitter data to rethink the way they create content across their outlets. Characters and scripts are now often conceived and shaped based on engagement with the audience. Content creates data, which Globo analyzes for insights they use to create new content. The Globo team believes that Twitter has fundamentally changed the way people communicate with each other and have reoriented their processes towards the immersive experience their audience now demands.

After color television, I think this is the greatest revolution in how we produce television. Nothing else has altered the content since then. This relationship we are establishing — it’s something very powerful.

Julia Gutnik Head of Business Development, Globo Television

Over the past year, IBM has integrated Twitter data into a range of its analytics solutions including Watson Analytics, BigInsights and Social Media Analytics, as well as a data service on Bluemix. We’ve also worked with IBM to train more than 33,000 IBM consultants and analytics professionals on the power of Twitter data. These professionals are now able to combine their specialized industry expertise with an understanding of Twitter data to help their clients identify new opportunities.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about our partnership with IBM is that we’re just getting started. Today, the IBM Institute for Business Value published a research paper on the business of social, using Twitter data. We’re also working with IBM to develop a series of industry analytics solutions that combine Twitter data with other external data sources to generate new types of insights to tackle very specific industry challenges. Look for us to continue to highlight new applications of Twitter data and work with IBM to create new solutions that help companies in every industry change the way they make business decisions.