The past week saw a number of notable Big Data developments, particularly in the social media analytics markets, which was thrust back into the limelight last Thursday after customer experience management firm Lithium Technologies confirmed reports that it has acquired Klout. Terms of the deal were not disclosed by the companies, but Fortune cited insiders as saying the transaction is worth nearly $200 million.

The six-year-old Klout uses machine learning algorithms to ingest data from social networks and measure the online influence of individuals and brands moment from moment. Each user is assigned a so-called “Klout Score” from 1 to 100 that supposedly reflects their ability to engage others across the social sphere, although critics have argued that this approach is far too simplistic to be accurate. Nonetheless, Lithium CEO Rob Tarkoff is confident that the startup’s technology will prove a valuable addition to his firm’s offering. “The conversation between consumers and brands should be just that: a conversation, not a shout by brands at consumers. That’s the promise the new Lithium will deliver on,” the executive wrote in a blog.

Meanwhile, trend visualization specialist Bottlenose teamed up with Critical Mention to bring real-time analytics to traditional media. Through integration with the latter’s API, marketers can now search for mentions of particular terms and brands in TV and radio broadcasts and identify patterns across segments in near real time.

Over in the Hadoop ecosystem, SyncSort announced that its revamped partner program has attracted three new regional integrators. InterWorks, R-square analytics subsidiary Clarte and iOLAP have begun offering the firm’s ETL and data integration solutions to customers seeking to move corporate information off their mainframes turn it into business insights.

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