Author: Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy

As Vice President of Product and Strategy at Gnip, Rob Johnson is responsible for driving the development and production of Gnip’s products. He also plays an integral role in working with Gnip’s data publishers to make more public data available in the social data ecoystem.

@robjohnson

Introducing PowerTrack for Tumblr

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy

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Gnip is introducing a solution to make it even easier to find the Tumblr data you want to see. We’re introducing PowerTrack for Tumblr, a way to filter specific content. Tumblr is an unbelievable source of social data with more than 70 million new posts every day. Similar to PowerTrack for Twitter, PowerTrack for Tumblr will deliver full coverage of the posts you want based on the filtering criteria you create.

With PowerTrack for Tumblr, you can filter Tumblr data by not only keyword, but also by specific Tumblr blogs. This means if a brand wants to track the content on their Tumblr, they can track activity and reblogs around that specific Tumblr. In addition, users can track specific URLS, so if you’re a brand you can watch for all links to your company page. With Tumblr’s seven post types (text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, video), it’ll now be possible to hone in on specific post types. If you’re only interested when a song is posted, now it’ll be even easier to track. You can read all of the specific filtering rules available on Gnip’s documentation.

After we announced the launch of the Tumblr firehose in April of this year, we’ve been blown away by the uniqueness and richness of Tumblr content and how active their community is. And the Tumblr analytics space is evolving quickly with the launch of Union Metrics for Tumblr several weeks ago. We know that content on Tumblr can be incredibly viral and sticky due to the ability to reblog and tag content. Whether brands have an official presence on Tumblr or not, they’re going to be mentioned there. We’re excited to offer a product that makes it easier to find mentions and content. Check out the details on your own or email us at sales@gnip.com to learn more.

A Moment in History: Access the Full Archive of Public Tweets

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy

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We are proud to announce that, for the first time, access to the entire historical archive of public Tweets, dating back to @Jack’s very first Tweet more than 7 years ago, is now available via our new product, Historical PowerTrack for Twitter. This product has been years in the making, and we can’t wait to see what the world will build with this data.

just setting up my twttr

— Jack Dorsey (@jack) March 21, 2006

We believe that social data has unlimited value and near limitless application. The nature (fast & viral) and newness of social conversations has naturally directed focus to realtime applications. However, as the world becomes more reliant on realtime social data and the amount of social data created grows exponentially, the need to put this information into historical context has become increasingly important. Often, companies are considering the realtime reaction in social data and asking “is this good or bad?” This is one of the main questions historical data can answer. For example, if an auto manufacturer launches a new model and 25% of the social conversation is determined to be negative, is that healthy? Knowing that the last model launched to record sales & had 40% negativity helps put the new realtime data into context.

Historical data can also be highly informative to predictions about the future. Researchers have suggested to us that they can predict the outcome of a revolution by studying past revolutions online such as the “Arab Spring”. Likewise, we’re seeing hedge funds make a real commitment to incorporating social data into their trading algorithms. It is critical for these funds to be able to refine their predictive trading models by studying vast quantities of historical data.

Until now, all this promise of social data has had a foundational limitation: very little reliable and complete historical data has been available. And as we know, historical analysis is only as good as the quality of the underlying data. You can’t provide complete context if you only have part of the data. That’s why we are so excited to be the first company to offer complete coverage of all public Tweets from the beginning of time.

We’re able to deliver the full historical corpus via our long-standing partnership with Twitter. We helped Twitter deliver the full archive of Tweets to the Library of Congress. That was a massive effort that took a long time. The rest of the social data ecosystem can benefit from that effort starting today.

This level of access has never been available and we know it is really going to accelerate the rate of innovation going forward. We think there are new products and businesses that will now be possible with access to a “social layer” of historical data. We frequently ask ourselves “If you could know what the world was saying at any moment in time about any topic, what could you build?”

We’ve already been working with companies like Esri, Union Metrics, Brandwatch, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, and Texifter during our early access period and it’s been incredible to see how fast they are innovating with this new data.

Gnip aspires to be the source of record for all public conversation. That’s a lofty goal. We’re taking a major step forward with today’s announcement.

Want to learn more about Historical PowerTrack for Twitter? Email info@gnip.com.

20/20 Hindsight: 30-Day Replay for Twitter Now Available

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy

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Update – Gnip now offers access to the full Twitter archive via Historical PowerTrack for Twitter, and Replay now provides a 5-Day rolling window.

Imagine you run a consumer electronics company. You just launched a game-changing new smartphone that will make or break your company. Two weeks after the launch, you’re hearing stories about your new phone burning users while they’re using it. You see the odd Tweet here and there but aren’t sure what the scale of this problem is or how you should respond. You make a panicked call to the company who monitors social media for you and they tell you that they can start tracking for this going forward but since they only get a realtime stream of Twitter data, there’s nothing they can do to get the last 14 days worth of Tweets.

They would love to help, but there’s nothing they can do about it. In a realtime world, once the stream of Tweets has passed, they’re gone.

Until today, this was how the world worked.

I’m excited to announce the launch of 30-Day Replay for Twitter, which is available to our customers immediately. No wait list. With Replay for Twitter, Gnip customers don’t have to worry about missing Tweets in the realtime stream since they can now replay history to get any of the 7.5 Billion Tweets they need from the past 30 days.

We’ve been working for the past year to solve this problem, starting with our work to provide the full archive of Twitter data to the Library of Congress. We’ve worked with a select group of Beta clients for the last couple of months to overcome the technical challenges that mining billions of Tweets can create to bring this product to life. We know 30-Day Replay is a key piece of our promise to deliver the reliable, enterprise-grade products our customers expect.

If you’re a current Gnip customer, contact your account rep or email sales@gnip.com to learn more about 30-Day Replay for Twitter. If you’re not a Gnip customer, contact us today to learn why you should be.

Gnip, Twitter and the U.S. Library of Congress Partner to Preserve Tweets

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy

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In April 2010, the U.S. Library of Congress and Twitter announced that Twitter will donate its public Twitter conversation data to the Library of Congress archives, making it available for researchers to read and preserving it for generations to come. This was an historic moment: for the first time, a communication channel in the social media space had been identified as a relic of our culture, emblematic of the role technology has come to play in our interactions with one another.

Today we’re honored to announce that Gnip is playing a key role in the this project by delivering past and future Twitter data to the Library of Congress for historic preservation in the archives.

“By providing a complete and reliable stream of Twitter data, Gnip is playing a critical role in helping the Library of Congress build a stable, sustainable archive for future generations,” said a representative from the Library of Congress.

On a technical level, the magnitude of this project is enormous: with over a billion Tweets being generated weekly, the scale of data delivery involved in this project is historic. We’ve learned a lot from this project and it is clear that some of the outcomes from this project will benefit Gnip’s future product offerings. We look forward to sharing some of the technical details in the future at the appropriate time.

As a company, we couldn’t be more pleased to be a part of this momentous project. We’re eager to see what kind of research develops from the public archive made accessible by the Library of Congress. We’ve watched with awe as news of world-changing events like the Arab Spring and Osama Bin Laden’s death have flowed through our servers, and now we’re proud to be part of ensuring these historic events will be preserved for our posterity.

The archive of Twitter data which Gnip delivers to the Library of Congress will cater to the needs of researchers who wish to use limited amounts of public Twitter data for non-commercial purposes. Gnip will continue to serve those seeking realtime data, full-coverage data, and commercial use cases.

Thanks to Twitter and the Library of Congress for making this announcement possible. We couldn’t be more excited to be working with you both.

Announcing Power Track – Full Firehose filtering for the Tweets you want

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy

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The response to the commercial Twitter streams we’ve made available has been outstanding. We’ve talked to hundreds of companies who are building growing businesses that analyze conversations on Twitter and other social media sites. As Twitter’s firehose continues to grow (now over 110 million Tweets per day), we’re hearing more and more requests for a way to filter the firehose down to the Tweets that matter.

Today, we’re announcing a new commercial Twitter product called Power Track. This is a keyword based filter of the full firehose that provides 100% coverage over a stream that you define. Power Track customers no longer have to deal with polling rate limits on the Search API and volume limits on the Streaming API.

In addition to keyword based filters, Power Track also supports boolean operators and many of the custom operators allowed on Twitter Search API. With Power Track, companies and developers can define the precise slice of the Twitter stream they need and be confident they’re getting every Tweet, without worrying about volume restrictions.

Currently we support operators for narrowing the stream to a set of users, matching against unwound URLs, filtering by location, and more. We’ll continue to add support for more ways for our customers to filter the content relevant to them in the future. Check the documentation to see the technical details of these operators and more.

Gnip is here to ensure the enterprise marketplace gets the depth, breadth, and reliability of social media data it requires. Please contact us at info@gnip.com to find out more.

Official Google Buzz Firehose Added to Gnip’s Social Media API

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy

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Today we’re excited to announce the integration of the Google Buzz firehose into Gnip’s social media data offering. Google Buzz data has been available via Gnip for some time, but today Gnip became one of the first official providers of the Google Buzz firehose.

The Google Buzz firehose is a stream of all public Buzz posts (excluding Twitter tweets) from all Google Buzz users. If you’re interested in the Google Buzz firehose, here are some things to know:

Google delivers it via Pubsubhubbub. If you don’t want to consume it via Pubsubhubbub, Gnip makes it available in any of our supported delivery methods: Polling (HTTP GET), Streaming HTTP (Comet), or Outbound HTTP Post (Webhooks).
The format of the Firehose is XML Activity Streams. Gnip loves Activity Streams and we’re excited to see Google continue to push this standard forward.
Google Buzz activities are Geo-enabled. If the end user attaches a geolocation on a Buzz post (either from a mobile Google Buzz client or through an import from another geo-enabled service), that location will be included in the Buzz activity.

We’re excited to bring the Google Buzz firehose to the Social Media Monitoring and Business Intelligence community through the power of the Gnip platform.

Here’s how to access the Google Buzz firehose. If you’re already a Gnip customer, just log in to your Gnip account and with 3 clicks you can have the Buzz firehose flowing into your system. If you’re not yet using Gnip and you’d like to try out the Buzz firehose to get a sense of volume, latency, and other key metrics, grab a free 3 day trial at http://try.gnip.com and check it out along with the 100 or so other feeds available through Gnip’s social media API.

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Author: Rob Johnson, Product Development and Strategy