Just a year old, Julpan was founded by computer scientist Ori Allon, who is known for his work on search algorithm, Orion, which was acquired by Google in 2006. After the acquisition, Allon went to work for Google and integrated his system into their main search algorithm. In 2010, Allon left Google and set up Julpan.
As a part of the Twitter-Julpan deal, Allon is now set to be the director of engineering at San-Francisco based Twitter. This should help fill the void created by Twitter’s chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury, who announced that he would be leaving the company, last week.
Announcing that they had been acquired by Twitter via an online message, Allon said, “We have created innovative, early-alpha-stage search technology that analyzes social activity across the Web to deliver fresh and relevant content to users.”
He added, “With more than 230 million tweets per day on every subject imaginable, Twitter gives us a chance to make an even greater contribution towards instantly bringing people closer to what is most meaningful to them.”
Julpan’s technology helps users find the most relevant content shared on the Web, without the need to know what keywords to search for. It says that it does this by analyzing the activity of over 100 million people to determine on a real-time basis, the most important stories that are happening.
The startup claims that its algorithms automatically filter away spam and categorizes stories by topic, thereby allowing users to focus on the quality-content and ignore the noise.
Apparently, this sifting can also be done at a local level by analyzing the social web and correlating it with location information to determine what people in each location are saying and sharing.
On this acquisition, Twitter not only gets Julpan’s technology but also its 12 employees, who will continue to work from their New York office.
Twitter confirmed the acquisition in an email statement. “We acquired them because Ori Allon and his talented team have taken social search to an entirely new level. This will quickly enhance our ongoing efforts to surface more relevant content to users in real time,” spokeswoman Lynn Fox said.
Consequent to shutting down of Google’s Realtime search function, Twitter has been on the lookout for a technology which will help it in this area. After its deal with the micro-blogging site expired and days after the launch of its own social network, Google+, the search engine shut down this service in July.
Recently, Twitter launched Twitter Web Analytics, a tool which provides website owners with more data on the efficacy of their Twitter integrations. So, the Julpan acquisition could be one more tool in its analytical armor.