Apple has officially jumped on the Big Data bandwagon with the acquisition of Topsy Labs, a social media analytics startup headquartered in San Francisco. The consumer electronics giant confirmed the buy after insiders leaked the news to the Wall Street Journal, but did not verify claims that the deal is valued at more than $200 million.

Founded in 2008, Topsy scans Twitter activity to provide customers with insight into top influencers, the success of their marketing campaigns, and the amount of buzz surrounding a particular person or term. The company raised $32.2 million in funding from investors, and lists top media companies such as The Huffington Post and Discovery Communications among its clients.

What sets Topsy apart from others is that it’s one of the very few vendors with full access to the Twitter firehose, a stream of social interactions that averages around 500 million messages per day. The acquisition buys Apple real time visibility into consumer sentiment, as well as every single tweet published since the micro-blogging service launched in 2006.

Apple didn’t disclose its plans for Topsy, but analysts speculate that the startup’s technology will likely be baked into Siri to deliver personalize search results. Debra Aho Williamson of eMarketer believes that the acquisition could make iAd more attractive for marketers and give record labels even more reason to sell content on iTunes.

“All of these businesses would appreciate having access to more of this real-time data,” Williamson said. “Now Apple has a new tool to help the companies that use its services become better, smarter marketers.”

Apple’s acquisition of Topsy comes just a few weeks after Livefyre picked up Realtidbits. Founding CEO Jordan Kretchmer said that his upstart’s flagship social media analytics tool will be integrated into Livefyre’s StreamHub engagement platform.