Guh, I'm so frustrated by seeing this type of comment over and over again:
> Datasift falls squarely in the [business and analytics] bracket, which means Twitter’s decision is a complete reversal of their previous stated stance, a stance that led to investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s an ugly move.
It's not. Datasift resold Twitter data. They added their own metadata to Tweets, like sentiment, but they didn't do any direct analytics themselves.
In fact, if Datasift really were in the analytics business, they'd be free to sit on top of their customers' Twitter streams and provide analytics.
EDIT: full disclosure, I'm the vp of product for a company that does do social media analytics and measurement, so I've got a particular perspective on this subject. We get our data from Gnip directly, for what it's worth.
I think that Twitter as a highly targeted ad platform would have been a disaster - if it truly lived up to that potential it would be a creepy place to visit: where the entire environment is intimately tailored to you in an effort to sell you something. I prefer it as a communication platform, myself.
How can Twitter make money? Personally, I'd say they should monetize the "whales" who use it as an advertising platform. Charge the celebrities who use it to promote films. Charge the corporations who use it to market to their followers. Charge for commercial use of the API.
I don't know if this is realistic, but it seems better than what is happening now.
> Datasift falls squarely in the [business and analytics] bracket, which means Twitter’s decision is a complete reversal of their previous stated stance, a stance that led to investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s an ugly move.
It's not. Datasift resold Twitter data. They added their own metadata to Tweets, like sentiment, but they didn't do any direct analytics themselves.
In fact, if Datasift really were in the analytics business, they'd be free to sit on top of their customers' Twitter streams and provide analytics.
EDIT: full disclosure, I'm the vp of product for a company that does do social media analytics and measurement, so I've got a particular perspective on this subject. We get our data from Gnip directly, for what it's worth.
http://synthesio.com/corporate/en/2015/synthesio-news/twitte...