Gnip tames social media’s torrent of talk
(Photo by Michael Myers) Jud Valeski, chief executive of Boulder-based Gnip Inc., has created a way to help companies make sense of all the chatter that goes on about them through social web channels such as Twitter and Facebook.
Gnip, which was founded in 2008, has carved out an important space in the social media ecosystem, acting as “a middle man” that helps businesses cope with the torrent of information sites like Facebook and Twitter generate everyday, chief executive Jud Valeski said.
Gnip collects the tweets, status updates and other information posted on public portions of social media sites and delivers it to clients. It has created what it calls “the first realtime social media data delivery platform.”
Understanding what that means requires a quick tour of the social media landscape. For laymen, Valeski can do it in about two minutes at a whiteboard.
Think of the social media world as a feedback loop between the users of sites like Facebook and Twitter and brands that monitor consumer and public sentiment.
Social media users generate hundreds of millions of comments and posts every day, but sorting through the data can be overwhelming – there’s a reason the feeds are called firehoses. So social media monitoring firms have Gnip do the data collection and sorting for them.
“We are a crucial cog in that loop,” Valeski said.
Gnip relies on a type of software called an application programming interface. The interface takes the public data about 40 social media platforms generate and collects and delivers it to clients. They can either receive the entire firehose of data delivered in a single interface or receive specific segments.
Each social media site collects and delivers data in its own way, and Gnip continually updates its software to make sure clients get what they need. On its own, it would take a user a lot of time and effort to be able to handle the data from a single social media site, Valeski said.
Gnip’s clients include eight of the nine largest social media monitoring firms, which work with advertising agencies or individual companies. Financial firms and government agencies also use data provided by Gnip.
It is a profitable niche – Gnip is on pace to earn about $7.5 million per year and could double that in the next year. Gnip has tripled in size during the past few months.
Gnip’s value has been noted by Twitter, which in November 2010 made it the first company allowed to collect and resell data generated by Twitter users. Only one other company has that relationship with Twitter.
