Twitter Starting to Release Data to Third Parties

I ran across an interesting article about Twitter releasing its fire hose of data to third parties. Twitter is one of those Internet phenomena with massive growth but no profits. The service is free to all users, individuals and businesses alike. On the other hand, Twitter is being used very effectively by online marketers and offline businesses to drive traffic to websites and brick & mortar stores.

Third party applications are springing up every day to make Twitter easier for power users and more fun for casual users. They tap into the Twitter API for data. The problem has been that these third parties have to send a request to Twitter for the data which causes Twitter to ration these API calls to avoid overloading the system.

According to the article, Twitter is starting to open up the fire hose to certain third parties. With XMPP Twitter just sends out all of their data in a constant stream, whether you ask for it or not. The third party, like Gnip, takes the data and parses it for further use. This means that third party applications will start to work better.

In addition, Twitter will be attempting to roll out a revenue generating model to businesses in 2010. We will keep an eye on those developments closely. Until then, small businesses should ramp up their Twitter campaign, increase targeted followers, and utilize the free service to drive traffic while it is still free.

Let us know if you need help with your Twitter strategy.