GnipCentral.com - Simplifying Data Portability

Gnip.com is here to save the day. Or at least to “make data portability suck less.” This online service links social networks and other sites responsible for generating large amounts of user content and data to data consumers. The goal is to reduce the burdensome API load, and of course help the services to run more efficiently. As the thorough diagrams of the site explain, Gnip gathers basic user info from social networks, such as the username of a new user. From there, Gnip sends that info to whoever wants to get a hold of that data. With identification, those parties who receive the basic info can access the API of the original core service to obtain the actual data, such as the message sent in a social network, that they wish to have access to.

“Today, 3rd party data consumption means...API throttling & high latency, competing protocols, one-off data integrations, identity discovery challenges, and more grunt work than any of us like to do. None of these issues are insurmountable, most are not even complicated. They're hassles. An exponentially growing set of hassles that distract you from the features of your service that your users actually care about. Gnip is here to help. We make it easy to aggregate user data so that you can focus on doing something cool with it.”

Gnip is well on its way to being a key player in the relationship between data generators and data consumers. The service effectively reduced the API load and increases efficiency among these parties. A basic text introduction to the service, in addition to the diagrams, would help users to fully understand the functionality of the tool.

What additional explanation could be added? Are there additional data sources and providers that should be added to the Gnip network?