Machine Learning and the Evolution of Twitter

Microsoft's recent purchase of LinkedIn for a reported 26.2 billion may be the biggest acquisition news so far in 2016. But Twitter is betting that its own recent acquisition of Magic Pony Technology – a neural networks/machine learning company – for a mere 150 million will pay big dividends down the stretch. Commenting on the acquisition in a recent Twitter blog, Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey said, "Machine learning is increasingly at the core of everything we build at Twitter." Dorsey went on to say that, "Magic Pony's machine learning technology will help us build strength into our deep learning teams with world-class talent, so Twitter can continue to be the best place to see what's happening and why it matters, first. We value deep learning research to help make our world better, and we will keep doing our part to share our work and learnings with the community." Magic Pony Technology is the third machine-learning startup that Twitter has acquired since Madbits in 2014, which begs the question: Why is Twitter so heavily focused on machine learning?