Twitter Asks DiscoverText to Stop Sharing Tweet Data

It looks like the sharing of “bin Laden” Tweets I collected using an authorized connection to Twitter via their API is being flagged as a violation of the Twitter API Terms of Service.

Let’s be clear. We have never sold a Tweet. The data collected through the Twitter API and share through our system is the same publicly available data other users capture with screenshots and share on blogs, Facebook or Twitter itself. Nonetheless, the datasets we have assembled and similar samples are being taken temporarily off the Web site pending a resolution of this issue with Twitter.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter content is in the public domain and visible to anyone who follows a user. Important political events are increasingly covered on Twitter first. There is a hunger for the data and tools to parse it. We are building tools that might make it possible to find unique tweets worthy of note or identify broad trends in Twitter discourse around major political events. We hope Twitter will realize the value of enabling researchers, journalists and citizens better ways to search, sort and analyze clusters of this important historical information.