- Gnip provides businesses with real-time and historical datasets (as well as value-added data "enrichments") for nine social sharing platforms, including Twitter (TWTR +0.5%), Foursquare, Tumblr, and WordPress. The company also offers managed API access for Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and several other platforms.
- Twitter: "Gnip has played a crucial role in collecting and digesting our public data and delivering the most essential Tweets to partners ... Together we plan to offer more sophisticated data sets and better data enrichments."
- Gnip complements a data licensing business that accounted for 9% of Twitter's Q4 revenue, and which has been trying to grow via industry-specific partnerships.
- The startup could also help Twitter provide higher-quality data to advertisers (already a priority) as it continues fleshing out its ad product lineup. Gnip's clients include ad tech and social media monitoring firms.
- Deal terms are undisclosed. The acquisition might not go over well with Gnip rivals/fellow Twitter partners such as DataSift. Apple bought Twitter search engine/data provider Topsy last year.