Gnip is a social media API aggregation company that gathers data from social media sites and provides it to customers in a centralized location. It partners with Twitter to provide access to Twitter's full firehose of data. Gnip costs vary depending on the amount and type of data a business needs, ranging from a few thousand to over $100,000 per month. While useful for businesses to analyze brand sentiment and marketing efforts, Gnip would not be practical or affordable for individual use.

1. By: Amir Rodriguez

2. What is Gnip?
• Gnip is a social media API aggregation company.
• Which means that they gather specific data from
all kinds of social media sites and put it all in one
place.
• For example, Gnip is a partner with Twitter in
sharing its fire hose of data for customers who
want to know what people are saying about their
brand or company.
• Its website is www.gnip.com

3. Is there a Cost?
• Yes, there is a cost and it varies depending on
what kind of data your company needs and
from how many different social media sources
you want to gather data from.
• It can range from a couple thousand a month
to a hundred thousand a month, its all
depending on the data.

4. Would an individual use it? Why or why not?
• Gnip would only be practical for a business, it
is impractical and very expensive for a normal
consumer to use.
• A business would use it to find out what’s hot
and fresh, as well as the sentiment about their
brand in real-time.
• Its usefulness also varies depending on the
company.

5. What does a business gain by using it?
• A business would gain a real time view on what is
being said about them on the social web.
• They can gather all kinds of data to be used for
marketing, analytics and sentiment analysis.
• Companies can use Gnip to better serve their
clients by showing them what their current public
standing is amongst their consumer.
• For example, IBM can use it to find out if they
have positive PR on the web as a company, or
what people are saying about their products.

6. How to use Gnip
• 1. Login to Gnip

7. • The main dashboard shows each feed into the
Data Collector and the health and
performance of each feed.

8. • Click on “edit data feed” to edit the
parameters associated with a feed.

9. • Select the output format and any data
enrichments. Here I select the output format
as a JSON Activity Stream and also add some
data enrichment to expand shortened (bit.ly)
URLs.

10. • Select the data delivery format. Here I select a
HTTP stream.

11. • Once the feed is configured, click on the feed
to display activity.

12. • The Overview tab provides a high level
overview of the queries performed on the
Twitter Stream including the number of polls
performed and the number of activities
returned.

13. • The Data tab shows the data returned from
each query. It also includes details of the HTTP
stream.

14. • The Rules tab shows the metrics associated
with each rule defined to filter the stream.

15. Conclusion
• Gnip is a very amazing tool to have if you are a
business, you will have real time information
about the “buzz” about you on the web.
• Gnip is extremely customizable, allowing you
to tailor it specifically on what kind of data
you specifically want.
• Gnip can literally bring you every single tweet
about you on the web, making it a very
powerful marketing tool.