Twitter gobbles Gnip, its social data

Gnip pores over tweets to extract statistical wisdom.Twitter says it will use the technology to provide better data to developers and businesses.

Twitter has acquired Gnip, a company that focuses on collecting, organizing, and sharing social data.

The social network announced the news on its blog on Tuesday, saying that the move will help it provide 'more sophisticated data sets and better data enrichments' for use by developers and businesses. Perhaps more importantly, Twitter will likely attempt to use that data to enhance its appeal to brands and companies to satisfy shareholders calling on the company to find ways to boost revenue.

Gnip was founded in 2008 and was Twitter's first data-collection partner. The company's service collects public tweets from the social network's users, compiles them into digestible data sets, and serves them to companies and organizations around the globe. In some cases, that data is used for research, while in others, it's the backbone of an ad strategy. Gnip claims to have processed 2.3 trillion tweets since its founding. (Twitter itself delivers more than 500 million tweets per day.)

In addition to Twitter, Gnip analyzes data from a host of other sources, including Foursquare and Tumblr. It's not clear whether data collection on those services will continue. For its part, Gnip said only that it plans to deliver 'new offerings with Twitter.'

CNET has contacted Twitter for additional details on the deal. We will update this story when we have more information.

Twitter shares are up 91 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $41.78, following the Gnip acquisition announcement.