

Gnip: Numbers + Architecture - EastSmith
http://blog.gnipcentral.com/2008/12/19/numbers-architecture/

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neilc
I didn't get much out of this. Their traffic numbers are unremarkable. There's
the standard "databases are hard to scale" meme, and their software stack is
also pretty standard. Gnip as a business are interesting, though: there's a
_ton_ of money to be made in data integration, ETL and related services.

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axod
Is anyone here a gnip user? I hadn't heard of it before now. I have no clue
what problem it's trying to solve.

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alabut
I'm not but my friend works for them and I get the concept - it's like
feedburner for APIs. So instead of individual web apps polling twitter a few
times an hour, for example, you subscribe to gnip and it pings you (gnip is
ping spelled backwards) when there's an update. It turns your typical app's
pull request into a push instead, basically.

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electromute
Thanks, Al.

Yes, if you've ever tried to create a mashup using data from Twitter, digg,
delicious, etc., you know the problem is that you have to poll their entire
data set (without exceeding their api request limits) to get at the data you
are trying to track.

With Gnip, you get an abstraction layer so you can create a filter based on
usernames, for instance. When these users do something, like tweet, we post
that data back to you.

In this scenario, you no longer have to poll arbitrarily for needles in
haystacks--we push the needles to you when they occur.

Hope that helps! If anyone is interested in utilizing data from the social
graph to create their app (or if you are interested in publishing data you
have for public use), we have a Group list:
<http://groups.google.com/group/gnip-community> as well as documentation on
our site, www.gnipcentral.com and a set of client libraries (we are currently
evolving) to help facilitate such endeavors.

Cheers!

