The patents that Twitter bought from IBM were mostly low quality assets. IBM, largest patent holder for the last 21 years straight, is known for having tons of narrow patents on every little feature they develop. This deal was a good way for IBM to get rid of some garbage and a good way for Twitter to get a Big, Scary looking patent portfolio.

I did a qualitative analysis of the patent portfolio here: http://www.preferredembodiment.com/1/post/2014/03/twitter-bo...