Tumblr Gets a Data Firehose

Tumblr today released access to a real-time firehose of updates through a partnership with data provider Gnip.

The feed will include all of Tumblr’s public data, and is intended to help with brand monitoring, analytics and other projects.

Tumblr’s firehose is similar to Twitter’s, which Gnip also sells access to, along with 40 other social media sources. Tumblr now has more than 50 million blogs that post more than 70 million times per day. By contrast, Twitter sees about 350 million tweets per day.

Without taking anything away from Twitter, Tumblr VP of Product Derek Gottfrid told me, “The richness of data that we have is more than 140 characters. We support seven different post types, and the half-life of a Tumblr post extends much more than a tweet.”

Gnip COO Chris Moody added that Tumblr is less news-driven than Twitter, with lots of content related to products and images.

For now, Gnip has an exclusive on enterprise use of Tumblr data, both companies said, but that doesn’t apply to other potential uses of the data, like display advertising or consumer access. Gottfrid said Tumblr is also working on upcoming products for its own users that consume and analyze the firehose of data.

(Image courtesy Minnesota National Guard on Picasa)