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It's great for companies like Twitter and Facebook when startups build on their platform. The startups innovate and experiment with new features and business mo

It's great for companies like Twitter and Facebook when startups build on their platform. The startups innovate and experiment with new features and business models (at their founders' and investors' expense). The lousy ideas fail, the good ones survive and the platform owner can cherry-pick by either replicating the successful feature/business model themselves or buying their favourite. Then, by cutting off others' access to the platform, the platform owner can make their own service a monopoly and capture a significant proportion (if not all) of the others' customers and revenues. Phase 3: Profit!

MichaelGG 12y ago
DataSift was simply reselling Twitter's data, along with whatever enhancements and cleaned up API niceties they offered. And getting 80% of the revenue for that (according to the article). How does this benefit Twitter? How does this benefit startups wanting to use Twitter? The data is still available, just not through resellers.
- clay_to_n 12y ago
  DataSift and Gnip had access to the Twitter firehose (every single tweet posted, live). Normal businesses / developers can't get access to that. Twitter's "streaming" API is a tiny fraction of the firehose. So DataSift wasn't just reselling their data - they, along with Gnip, had a partnership that allowed them to get access to the firehose. For many social media companies, the firehose is a necessity, so they bought contracts with Gnip or DataSift. Then Twitter bought Gnip, and is cutting off DataSift's access to the firehose.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Right so if we say Gnip is Twitter, then anyone can go buy data from Twitter (even if it's a wholly owned subcompany). DataSift didn't have much of a value add (OK, historical data, common filters for Twitter and Reddit and others, etc.) But nothing that Twitter can't just in-house now that the market got nice and established.
    - jackgavigan 12y ago
      Yes. Having acquired Gnip, Twitter can now offer the same services that DataSift offers. So, Twitter terminates their "partnership" with DataSift, and all of DataSift's customers (i.e. the market that DataSift spent money and effort getting "nice and established", educating potential customers, helping them figure out how to make use of the data, etc.) who want to continue benefitting from those services will now migrate to Twitter/Gnip. I bet Twitter/Gnip will come out with some tool to make it ultra-easy for DataSift's customers to migrate across.
- jackgavigan 12y ago
  It was of benefit to Twitter because they got to find out whether or not there was a market for the "enhancements and cleaned up API niceities" that DataSift (and Gnip) offered, without needing to invest in it themselves. It's like MVP by proxy.

MichaelGG 12y ago

DataSift was simply reselling Twitter's data, along with whatever enhancements and cleaned up API niceties they offered. And getting 80% of the revenue for that (according to the article). How does this benefit Twitter? How does this benefit startups wanting to use Twitter? The data is still available, just not through resellers.

clay_to_n 12y ago
DataSift and Gnip had access to the Twitter firehose (every single tweet posted, live). Normal businesses / developers can't get access to that. Twitter's "streaming" API is a tiny fraction of the firehose. So DataSift wasn't just reselling their data - they, along with Gnip, had a partnership that allowed them to get access to the firehose. For many social media companies, the firehose is a necessity, so they bought contracts with Gnip or DataSift. Then Twitter bought Gnip, and is cutting off DataSift's access to the firehose.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Right so if we say Gnip is Twitter, then anyone can go buy data from Twitter (even if it's a wholly owned subcompany). DataSift didn't have much of a value add (OK, historical data, common filters for Twitter and Reddit and others, etc.) But nothing that Twitter can't just in-house now that the market got nice and established.
  - jackgavigan 12y ago
    Yes. Having acquired Gnip, Twitter can now offer the same services that DataSift offers. So, Twitter terminates their "partnership" with DataSift, and all of DataSift's customers (i.e. the market that DataSift spent money and effort getting "nice and established", educating potential customers, helping them figure out how to make use of the data, etc.) who want to continue benefitting from those services will now migrate to Twitter/Gnip. I bet Twitter/Gnip will come out with some tool to make it ultra-easy for DataSift's customers to migrate across.
jackgavigan 12y ago
It was of benefit to Twitter because they got to find out whether or not there was a market for the "enhancements and cleaned up API niceities" that DataSift (and Gnip) offered, without needing to invest in it themselves. It's like MVP by proxy.