Think of this as an agreement between the end user and Twitter – you agree with Twitter that whenever they receive tweets that match keywords relating to “hockey,” they will deliver the tweet directly to you as they happen. With Twitter’s Streaming API, users register a set of criteria (keywords, usernames, locations, named places, etc.) and as tweets match the criteria, they are pushed directly to the user. Unlike Twitter’s Search API where you are polling data from tweets that have already happened, Twitter’s Streaming API is a push of data as tweets happen in near real-time. The Twitter request limits have changed over the years but are currently limited to 180 requests in a 15 minute period. You are further limited by the number of requests you can make in a certain time period. With a specific keyword, you can typically only poll the last 5,000 tweets per keyword. For an individual user, the maximum number of tweets you can receive is the last 3,200 tweets, regardless of the query criteria. With the Twitter Search API, developers query (or poll) tweets that have occurred and are limited by Twitter’s rate limits.
How much data can you get with the Twitter Search API? A good way to think of the Twitter Search API is by thinking how an individual user would do a search directly at Twitter (navigating to and entering in keywords). The criteria can be keywords, usernames, locations, named places, etc. Through the Search API, users request tweets that match some sort of “search” criteria. Twitter’s Search API gives you access to a data set that already exists from tweets that have occurred. There are three different ways to access Twitter data that we hope you will be able to differentiate by the end of this blog posting.įirst up is Twitter’s Search API, which involves polling Twitter’s data through a search or username. Twitter has capitalized on this model as evidenced by their recent acquisitions of 10 different technology companies in 2012 that are built around their open API. It’s common for technology companies to acquire other innovative technologies rather than building innovations internally. Offering data externally allows developers to create products, platforms, and interfaces without the need to expose the raw data. The major advantage of offering an open API is to promote external innovation, further strengthening the base technology, service or data. What is the advantage of offering an open API? In this case, Twitter has data and lots of it! Twitter created an open API that allows external developers to develop technology which rely on Twitter’s data.
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How to harvest Twitter data with BrightPlanet’s Data-as-a-ServiceĪn API, or Application Programming Interface, is the instruction set created for developers to interact with some type of technology.How Twitter API differences critically impact users.Differences between the Twitter Firehose API, the Twitter Search API, and the Twitter Streaming API.The only way to access 100% of those tweets in real-time is through the Twitter “Firehose.” The other option for accessing tweets is using one of Twitter’s direct API offerings. Ranked as the 10th most popular site in the world by Alexa rank in January 2013, Twitter boasts 500 million registered users.