Twitter swoops for social analytics start-up Julpan

An Australian educated entrepreneur has sold his tech company, Julpan, to Twitter.

Ori Allon is an Israeli computer scientist, but came to Australia in 2002 to study at Melbourne’s Monash University. He then moved on to the University of NSW in Sydney, where he completed his PhD in 2009.

Following his studies, Allon built the Orion search engine, which was named after himself. Google won a three-way tussle with Yahoo and Microsoft to buy the start-up, with Allon joining the search engine giant following the purchase.

However, last year he departed Google and founded Julpan, which analyses social information shared on websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter has purchased Julpan for an undisclosed sum, with Allon moving across along with 11 other members of staff to the microblogging site’s New York office.

Allon, who will now be director of engineering at Twitter, says in a statement about the deal: “We founded Julpan more than a year ago.”

“In that time we’ve created innovative, early-alpha-stage search technology that analyses social activity across the web to deliver fresh and relevant content to users.

“Twitter houses an industry-leading engineering team that is tackling some of the internet’s most interesting opportunities.”

“With more than 230 million tweets per day on every subject imaginable, Twitter gives us a chance to make an even greater contribution toward instantly bringing people closer to what is most meaningful to them.”

“We look forward to joining forces with Twitter’s engineering team to explore how we can best integrate and optimise Julpan’s innovations.”

“I’d like to personally thank the talented engineers, architects and designers of Julpan. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people with whom to invent some of the world’s best social search technology.”