GOOGLE BUYS POSTRANK SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS COMPANY

Google has acquired PostRank, a Web company that measures the effects of social networking on online content. The announcement was made on PostRank's blog. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal appears to be an indication of the effects of social media on Google's long-term strategy, if not its immediate business. PostRank (a play on Google's own PageRank term) measures how many comments, bookmarks, tweets, and other social interactions a given piece of content generates, exactly the type of analytics a Web giant needs as it slowly grows its own social strategy.

So far, Google seems to be orienting itself around +1 icon and social search, as it slowly evolves a presence in social networking.