Column: What does Apple want from Topsy?

Quick show of hands: How many of you actually used Ping?

In case you don't recall, Ping was Apple's valiant effort to enter the world of social media by way of a music recommendation service through iTunes. And the reason you might not remember it is because it never caught on, went largely unsupported, and closed two years later as a colossal failure.

It's been over a year since Ping's crash and burn, and one would think Apple would steer clear of social media altogether following such a flagrant swing and a miss. And yet, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the company has just purchased the social analytics firm Topsy for $200 million.

Topsy specializes in parsing Twitter data and has logged over 425 billion tweets since 2006 to analyze trends, topics, and campaigns -- yet another very curious buyout for Apple in recent weeks.

Full story at Minyanville.