Companies allowed access to Twitter archives for market research purposes

PanARMENIAN.Net - Companies are now able to search and analyze up to two years of Twitter updates for market research purposes, BBC reports.

Firms can search tweets back to January 2010 in order to plan marketing campaigns, target influential users or even try to predict certain events.

Until today, only the previous 30 days of tweets were available for companies to search. Regular users can access posts from the past seven days.

UK-based Datasift is the first company to offer the archive. Its existing customers will be able to use access "historical" tweets from today, the company said.

"No-one's ever done this before," Tim Barker, Datasift's marketing manager, told the BBC. "It's a brand new service that we're bringing online - it's a massive technology challenge because of the amount of data that is pumped out every single day."

He said the company takes in roughly 250 million tweets every 24 hours, all of which are analyzed for content - such as whether they were said in a positive or negative tone.

The software will also log location data and social media influence based in part on existing influence monitoring service Klout.

Private accounts and tweets that have been deleted will not be indexed by the site.

Datasift said they have seen a lot of demand for the product - with almost 1,000 companies joining a waiting list to access the service.

Twitter, which has been steadily building various revenue streams, will earn money from Datasift as part of a licensing fee.

The cost to businesses will depend on the company's size, with Datasift's entry-level package costing £635 ($1,000) per month for "individuals or developers".

Meanwhile, the move has ignited concerns among privacy campaigners.

"People have historically used Twitter to communicate with friends and networks in the belief that their tweets will quickly disappear into the ether," argued Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International.

Online rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation described the service as "creepy".