There’s one question that seems to be asked of Twitter all the time: what’s the ROI?

I tend to reply with some smart alec comment such as “That’s like asking: what’s the ROI from my telephone!” Yeah, that doesn’t go down too well, but it’s true. Twitter is a channel, a tool. Just like your telephone, it has no ROI unless you put in place a strategy that can be measured.

Well, that may be all well and good, but Twitter’s not taking any chances. It’s not prepared to sit back and hope its business users are smart enough to figure out the “ROI of Twitter,” so it’s made an important acquisition. It’s just acquired an analytics company.

When Smallthought launched Trendly, a tool that helps web sites distinguish signal from noise in their Google Analytics data, we were among the first to try it…Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we announce the acquisition of Smallthought Systems. They have joined our analytics team and will focus on integrating ideas from Trendly into our current tools and building innovative realtime products for our future commercial partners.

Trendly is now closed to new customers, but according to its site, the service offered some pretty cool analysis. Stuff you can actual use!