Gnip Raises $2m to Push Twitter Firehose Data Sales

US-based social media data provider Gnip has raised $2m in new financing, to enable it to become the first authorized reseller of Twitter's 'Firehose' data stream.

Founded in 2008 by Jud Valeski and Eric Marcoullier - who sold his firm MyBlogLog to Yahoo! for an estimated $10m - Gnip provides real-time social media data from Twitter, Facebook,YouTube and other sources, to social media monitoring companies.

Its latest round of financing, which was led by existing investor Foundry Group, brings the total raised to date to $6.6m.

Earlier this week, Twitter gave Gnip permission to sell data streams for internal monitoring and analytics purposes. Previously, Twitter offered its 'Firehose' complete data stream for a fee, while its 'Gardenhose' 10% stream of data was provided free to approved developers.

As a result of the deal, the 'Gardenhose' will be replaced by Gnip's 'Decahose' for $5k a month. It will be available alongside the 'Halfhose' 50% stream for $30k a month, and the 'Mentionhose' of all user mentions for $20k a month.

Web site: www.gnip.com .