IBM and Twitter might seem like unlikely partners. One is the classic button-down business technology company, while the other is the freewheeling hub of online communication in bursts of 140 characters or fewer.
But their partnership, announced on Wednesday, makes a lot of sense. It is intended to give IBM’s data-analysis business, including its Watson artificial-intelligence technology, broad access to one of the world’s richest data sources — billions of people expressing their interests, wants and worries about every imaginable topic.
The goal, according to IBM and Twitter executives, is to enrich business decision-making. “We know what the world is thinking in real time,” said Chris Moody, vice president of data strategy at Twitter. His company’s information resource, he said, should have “nearly limitless applications.”
In the future, Mr. Moody predicted, “every significant business decision will have Twitter input.”
If so, IBM wants to be the technology vehicle for delivering Twitter-enhanced decisions. Alistair Rennie, general manager for big data and analytics at IBM, called the collaboration with Twitter a “landmark partnership” and one that, by exploiting Twitter’s unique data asset, will open the door to “business decisions based on the pulse of the planet.”
The IBM and Twitter executives announced the partnership at a conference on data analysis hosted by IBM in Las Vegas.
Later, in a joint interview, Mr. Moody and Mr. Rennie declined to discuss the financial terms of the partnership. But if the companies could achieve their vision of using Twitter to improve business decisions spanning everything from marketing to product development, Mr. Moody said it would be a “great revenue opportunity” for both parties.
Most Twitter messages are public. Analysts at IBM and at other companies routinely pore through Twitter traffic for early signals of market trends and consumer sentiment on behalf of corporate clients. And Twitter has increasingly worked with companies and nonprofit researchers.
At the conference, Mr. Moody mentioned a project with scientists at Harvard Medical School to study food poisoning by mining Twitter messages. He noted that an unnamed manufacturer of commercial fryers, like those used in fast-food restaurants, found that tweets with the phrase “soggy fries” were an advance sign of equipment malfunctions.
Twitter’s work with other companies, Mr. Moody said, will continue. But the IBM partnership, he noted, is in a “new category,” given the breadth of the activities.
IBM, Mr. Moody said, will have “full fidelity” access to Twitter data — all public messages and the archives of past messages. The two companies will also jointly develop software tools tailored to business customers, and IBM will train thousands of its consultants to use Twitter data for clients. Knowing how to handle Twitter data in business, Mr. Moody noted, is a “huge gap” for most companies, and the IBM consulting force should help bridge that gap.
In the announcement, IBM said it planned first to integrate Twitter data in its cloud-based data analysis services, including Watson Analytics. The two companies will also develop software applications that map customer sentiment for use in sales, marketing and customer service. By incorporating Twitter data into its software, IBM, according to Mr. Rennie, will be able to offer Twitter-enhanced products to large numbers of business customers rather than having each one be a start-from-scratch project.
With this partnership, Twitter is the latest well-known company to join with IBM in recent months in fast-growing fields. IBM teamed up with SAP in cloud computing and with Apple in data-driven software applications for iPhones and iPads.
These partnership deals all come in the context of IBM’s seeking growth in promising new businesses faster than those same emerging technologies erode the sales and profits in the company’s traditional hardware and software lines. Last week, IBM reported disappointing quarterly results, and Virginia M. Rometty, IBM’s chief executive, declared that the company had to pick up the pace.