By: Amir Rodriguez

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

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.

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.

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.

How to use Gnip

• 1. Login to Gnip

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

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

• 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.

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

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

• 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.

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

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

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.