As Twitter continues to make its push to serve businesses and promote the value of Twitter as an enterprise tool, an increasing number of data analytics companies are working to collect, organize, and monetize the vast amount of data coming from the company’s stream every minute.
Gnip, one of the few companies with full access to Twitter’s firehose of data, which has changed in terms of pricing and availability to different companies over time, is announcing the distinction of being the first company to provide access to all tweets ever sent, including the first sent by Jack Dorsey in 2006 (back when it was called Twttr and you sent tweets via SMS). Several other businesses already provide analysis of Twitter’s firehose of data, including companies like Topsy, which makes some of that data public, but the development from Gnip speaks to the growing demand from private companies and investors to have access that full range of information.
From investors interested in analyzing trends in tweets about publicly-traded companies, to marketers looking for reactions to a branded hashtag or product name, a large number of businesses see tweets as a valuable way to measure public opinion and reaction. The service is mainly intended for corporate clients, and the price will depend on the particular service provided.
Gnip worked with Twitter to provide tweets to the Library of Congress, and has already been providing a variety of services to brands, which the Gnip says are 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies, most of whom hire intermediary firms to access the data from Gnip and then distill the information for them. Prior services include a feed of a user’s mentions on Twitter, or a 30-day historical analysis of a particular word or phrase requested. Gnip also provides access to information from services like Tumblr or WordPress, critical for some brands looking to a get a good representation of how consumers are discussing their products online.