Gnip, Inc. was a

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social me ...

API aggregation company 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 (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

, it provided data from dozens of

websites via a single API. 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: Gnip's co-founder Eric Marcoullier actively advocated for adoption of open web standards, and helped define the new

Activity Streams Activity Streams is an open format specification for activity stream protocols, which are used to syndicate activities taken in social web applications and services, similar to those in Facebook's, Instagram's, and Twitter's. Facebook opens ac ...

format for web data. Subsequent to a 2010 data licensing agreement with

Twitter Inc Twitter, Inc. is an American social media company based in San Francisco, California. The company operates the social networking service Twitter. It previously operated the Vine short video app and Periscope livestreaming service. Twitter ...

, 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, 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. 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 is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and 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 a popular way for amateur and professiona ...

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

Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software 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