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Twitter cracks down on developers making surveillance tools
If it wasn't already clear that Twitter wants to keep police and spies out of your tweets, it is now. Twitter is warning developers that it won't let them use public programming kits or Gnip data for surveillance reasons, whether the clients are law enforcement or anyone else. Just because many tweets are public doesn't mean it's acceptable to harvest them, Twitter says. To that end, it's promising "expanded" efforts to crack down on developers who use the data for surveillance reasons. Get caught and you'll either have limited access or lose it entirely.
Twitter's latest acquisition turns tweets into a commodity
Twitter announced today that it has bought Gnip, a social data company that has packaged and sold data from Twitter to other companies for the past four years. Gnip is one of a few firms that has access to Twitter's "fire hose" of data -- a history of tweets that date back to the company's beginnings in 2006 -- and is one of Twitter's longest-lasting data partners. Such data is tremendously valuable, as Twitter mentioned in a blog post regarding the acquisition: These public tweets can reveal a wide variety of insights -- so much so that academic institutions, journalists, marketers, brands, politicians and developers regularly use aggregated Twitter data to spot trends, analyze sentiment, find breaking news, connect with customers and much more.
Twitter's opening up your timeline data... for science!
There's a veritable wealth of data to be gleaned from the world's tweets, but apparently it's not so easy for researchers to get a hold of. To that end, Twitter has announced that it will start granting certain research institutions no-cost access to the globe's (public) 140-character musings as part of its Data Grants program. If you're thinking that this sounds a bit familiar, it's because Foursquare recently did something similar and even used the same company -- Gnip -- to do the legwork. This could possibly give scientists valuable insights about where diseases originated or even a snapshot of slang patterns and global events, for example. The deadline for the first wave of applicants is this March 15th should you want to be among the first to put Earth's tweets under the microscope.
Foursquare agrees to share check-in data with Gnip, promises it's anonymous
Foursquare is putting your check-in data to use through its new partnership with Gnip, a service that aggregates social media APIs. Gnip has similar deals with companies like Tumblr and Disqus, and it plans to provide Foursquare-sourced information to market and academic researchers. Blake Shaw, Foursquare's resident data scientist told Gnip, "I think this data can act almost like a microscope for cities." It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Foursquare's set out to share check-in data. A few months ago, the company took some flack for its data-sharing initiative allowing businesses to track their customers' activity -- despite the inclusion of an opt-out feature. This time, they're eager to clarify that the data accessible through Gnip is fully anonymized. Researchers will be able to see where and when check-ins were made, but the only user data attached will be a gender. So, Gnip will know that a female Foursquare user stopped by a specific Starbucks at 11:30AM, but that's all. Your data will remain as anonymous as it can be on a site devoted to broadcasting your every move.
