Twitter sells its tweet data exclusively via Gnip, DataSift, and perhaps one or two other authorized data providers (i.e. they alone have access to 100% of Twitter's data pipeline, both historical and real-time).
Using Twitter's public search API you can get a max of 1% access to their data pipeline.
It's a racket, one that is making the authorized providers (and Twitter) heaps of cash.
So, yes, advertising, but also data; those are the revenue streams that social media are creating IPO-able companies out of.
Huh? Tweet data is not free for public use (well, less than 1% is), although the public provides the very data that they are monetizing.
We have a client who's willing to pay $10K/month for real-time tweet data pertaining to 20 search terms in the pharmaceutical industry, which is a small-time job for Gnip and Datasift. Check their pricing and tell me if you think Twitter is giving this data away for free. More likely they're taking a decent piece of the pie in exchange for access to the data.
Social media data is crucial for companies to stay on top of current (and past) trends -- Twitter knows this, and are profiting, presumably hugely as they have the market cornered with deep pocket clients willing to pay, repeatedly, month after month.
Twitter sells its tweet data exclusively via Gnip, DataSift, and perhaps one or two other authorized data providers (i.e. they alone have access to 100% of Twitter's data pipeline, both historical and real-time).
Using Twitter's public search API you can get a max of 1% access to their data pipeline.
It's a racket, one that is making the authorized providers (and Twitter) heaps of cash.
So, yes, advertising, but also data; those are the revenue streams that social media are creating IPO-able companies out of.