Twitter has announced a new acquisition for the company, social data provider Gnip. Gnip collects (public) social media information from a variety of sources and gives it to some very high-profile clients who then use that data to analyse what is going on, both with their products and around the world. Gnip collects data from a variety of sources such as YouTube, Twitter, WordPress, Facebook and other outlets with a large amount of public commentary but the acquisition should mean that Twitter will be working a lot more closely with the company.

Twitter’s announcement said that “We want to make our data even more accessible, and the best way to do that is to work directly with our customers to get a better understanding of their needs. To that end, we have agreed to acquire Gnip, a leading provider of social data and a long-standing Twitter data partner.”

By the sound of things, the acquisition won’t have much of an effect on Gnip’s customer base, which includes IBM, Adobe and Microsoft. Those companies will “…continue to build and innovate on one of the world’s largest and most trusted providers of social data and the foundation for innovation is now even stronger”, according to Gnip’s own announcement.

“Combining forces with Twitter allows us to go much faster and much deeper. We’ll be able to support a broader set of use cases across a diverse set of users including brands, universities, agencies, and developers big and small. Joining Twitter also provides us access to resources and infrastructure to scale to the next level and offer new products and solutions.”

Terms of the deal between the two parties have not been disclosed and both Twitter and Gnip will be making announcements about which direction they will be heading in at a later stage. In the meantime, should you be upset that your public Twitter posts (and everything else you do online) are being collected? That’s up to you but if it’s public, it’s going to happen either way.

Source: Twitter (blog)