Gnip, Inc. was a

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

API aggregation

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether Natural person, natural, Juridical person, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members ...

that was purchased by Twitter in 2014. Headquartered in

Boulder In geology, a boulder (or rarely bowlder) is a rock fragment with size greater than in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

, it provided data from dozens of

websites via a single

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

. Gnip was among the first social media API aggregation services. Gnip is known as an early influencer in building the real-time web. The company has also been instrumental in defining relevant

web standards Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of st ...

: Gnip's co-founder Eric Marcoullier actively advocated for adoption of open web standards, and helped define the new Activity Streams format for web data. Subsequent to a 2010 data licensing agreement with

Twitter Inc Twitter, Inc. was an American social media company based in San Francisco, California, which operated and was named for Twitter, its flagship social media network prior to its rebrand as X. In addition to Twitter, the company previously operat ...

, Twitter purchased Gnip in April 2014.

History

Gnip was founded by Jud Valeski and Eric Marcoullier with an initial investment of $1 million. The company was based on the premise that collecting data from many social APIs simultaneously is tedious and time-consuming. It dubbed itself the "Grand Central Station for the Social Web" shortly after launch. Although the company launched with just a few basic features such as notifications,Lowensohn, Josh (July 1, 2008)
"Gnip to bridge the data divide for noisy Web services"

CNET
'. . Retrieved 2017-09-16. the product was designed to act as an intermediary to simplify the collection of social media data. The company used the tagline "making data portability suck less." By the end of 2008, Gnip had raised $3.5 million in Series B funding from investors such as the Foundry Group and

First Round Capital First Round Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan First Round typically provides seed-stage funding and focuses on po ...

. The service was used for projects like collecting huge volumes of data for analyzing Twitter clients.Top Twitter Clients Revealed
In 2009, Gnip launched a Push API. In September, Gnip underwent a significant product overhaul accompanied by an internal restructuring of resources. In 2010, Gnip launched their new and revised social media

data collection Data collection or data gathering is the process of gathering and measuring information on targeted variables in an established system, which then enables one to answer relevant questions and evaluate outcomes. Data collection is a research com ...

product and released a manual describing use cases and significance of Twitter Inc's streaming API. Gnip's sources included

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

Google Buzz Google Buzz was a social networking, microblogging and messaging tool developed by Google. It replaced Google Wave and was integrated into their web-based email program, Gmail. Users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comm ...

Vimeo Vimeo ( ) is an American Online video platform, video hosting, sharing, and services provider founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices and operates on a ...

, and others. In April 2014, Gnip was acquired by Twitter for $134.1 million in mostly cash and some stock.

References

{{Twitter Navigation Aggregation websites Application programming interfaces Companies based in Boulder, Colorado Twitter, Inc. acquisitions 2014 mergers and acquisitions