Types of Twitter API’s and Why do They Exist?
Twitter is the 49th highest-ranking website on the global web, according to Alexa’s web rankings. It boasts of a 330 million user base with 145 million daily active users. Moreover, 63% of all Twitter users fall under the age band of 35 and 65. This makes Twitter one of the foremost platforms to target consumers with purchasing power.
Another fascinating statistic is the fact that nearly 500 million tweets are sent every day on the platform. This corresponds to around 350,000 tweets per minute and 200 billion tweets per year. This makes Twitter the perfect platform for sourcing user-generated content and performs detailed analysis on a real-time basis.
Researchers, marketers, and brands rely on APIs to access this data, and this is made possible by Twitter’s direct APIs. In this post, we will primarily discuss these points:
- Basics of an API
- Types of Twitter APIs
- Using eInsightData to leverage the power of Twitter APIs
Let’s begin by understanding the basics of an API.
What is an API?
API stands for Application Programming Interface that helps developers interact with technology or data set.
In simpler terms, APIs act as communication intermediaries that enable two applications to communicate. You may not even notice this, but even if you check the weather on your phone, you are interacting with an API that helps you communicate with the servers that transmit this data.
APIs can be found everywhere in this digital domain. Almost every platform you know of has its proprietary API working behind the scenes completely hidden from the end-user. Sure, on the front we communicate with the beautiful interfaces of our well-designed mobile apps but it the APIs that run the show.
Types of Twitter APIs
Twitter has its own set of open APIs that developers use to create technology that can leverage the data provided in innovative ways. Having a set of open APIs has its advantages as it promotes external innovations and helps in building platforms that decode data differently.
Having an open API has its merits as it spares the creator of the innovation pressure. It can outsource the innovation part and acquire the companies that create the most appealing solutions. Twitter has leveraged this business strategy in the past and has acquired over 10 companies that created products or platforms around their API.
Twitter has 3 APIs in existence that developers leverage to create services and products:
Twitter’s Search API
As the name suggests, this API involves extracting Twitter data through a phrase or username search. The Search API enables access to data from tweets that are already on Twitter. Users can request data through keywords, usernames, places, etc.
The Twitter Search API has its limitations, though. For a unique user, the maximum number of tweets that you can get against any search term is limited to the previous 3200 tweets. For specific keywords, this limit increases to 5000 tweets. There is also a limit of 120 requests per minute that can be made using the Search API.
Twitter’s Streaming API
The Twitter Streaming API differs from the Search API. We know that the Search API enables you to access existing tweets on the platform, but Streaming API pushes tweets as they happen in real-time. This means that you cannot access existing Twitter data using the Streaming API.
Users enter a set of keywords, phrases, usernames, etc. and whenever a tweet is posted that matches the specific criteria, they get pushed to the user. This action is initiated on Twitter’s side and is not a data action initiated by the user. However, there are a few drawbacks to the Streaming API.
One of the major drawbacks of deploying Streaming API is the fact that it can only provide you with a sample of tweets that are occurring in real-time. You can expect anywhere between 1% to about 40% of the tweets in real-time. The reason for this limitation is the fact that Twitter wants to up-sell you their Firehose API along with a few infrastructural limitations for the free Streaming API.
Twitter’s Firehose API
Twitter’s Firehose API enables complete access to tweets as they happen in real-time. In terms of functionality, Firehose is very similar to the Streaming API as it pushes tweets to end-users in real-time. But, with Firehose, you are guaranteed the delivery of 100% of the tweets that match your request criteria.
The Firehose API is managed by two data providers, GNIP & DataSift that have business relationships with Twitter. When a user leverages the Firehose API, he comes to an agreement with the data providers regarding what tweets the user would receive in real-time.
Firehose guarantees the delivery of 100% of the tweets that match the end-user search criteria, but is fairly costly. It removes a lot of usage restrictions (including licensing usage of data) and provides every bit of the required data.
Using eInsightData to leverage the power of Twitter APIs
Individual users might experience complexities when dealing with open Twitter APIs. These require a fair bit of coding expertise on the users’ part to integrate these open APIs in their workflow. The solution to this comes in the form of pre-existing API solutions such as eInsightData that come pre-packaged and already integrated with the Twitter APIs. Using eInsightData, you can:
- Download tweets from any account.
- Download tweets for any hashtag.
- Download Twitter followers from any account.
- Download Twitter followings/friends from any account.
Along with all the data, you also gain access to account and tweet level insights and precise Analytics. Thousands of businesses around the globe have opted for eInsightData as their Twitter API solution.
If you are an aspiring business who wants to up their marketing game or require authentic Twitter data for research or special projects, connect with me at mark@eInsightData.com and we can take this conversation further.