Twitter revokes third-party access to data, pressures celebs to use Periscope

Late Friday night, the social media platform announced it was terminating agreements with third-party companies that resold data from Twitter’s “fire hose,” or stream of tweets. Instead, the social media company will use an in-house data team, which it created after acquiring Gnip in 2014.

That could be a severe roadblock to third-party Twitter apps, analytics firms and others.

Zach Hofer-Shall explained the move on Gnip’s blog, saying in part:

At Twitter’s Analyst Day last November, Twitter’s VP of Data Strategy noted that when Twitter acquired Gnip, Gnip had the clear majority of Twitter’s data reseller business – the rest was held by the other two data resellers, DataSift and NTT Data. The acquisition of Gnip was the first step toward developing more direct relationships with data customers.