Social media APIs (Application Programming Interface) are a type of software that allow two platforms to exchange valuable information between each other to provide users with a personalized experience. Twitter has recently stopped offering free access to its API, provoking a turmoil in the advertising industry. 

Due to the pricing options offered by Twitter, many companies are now seeking alternatives to the Twitter API by turning to data provider companies that have access to vast amounts of data streams.

What is Twitter API?

The Twitter API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of programmable tools that can be utilized to comprehend or contribute to the discussion on Twitter. It enables developers to search, access, or generate various resources such as tweets, users, and spaces.

What is the Twitter API used for?

Twitter API allows to find and retrieve, engage with, or create a variety of different resources including the following:

• tweets search based on hashtags, keywords, geolocation, and interests, etc.
• subject of direct messages
• trends that certain users follow
• different media formats
• stream tweets in real-time based on a series of filters
• places/locations that are tagged in tweets. 

Besides the marketing use of Twitter API, it is also frequently used for academic research as it represents precise and unbiased public information available for master’s students, doctoral candidates and faculty or research-focused employees of academic institutions or universities.  Moreover, Twitter API data can be applied to data analysis and creating models to design bots.

How does Twitter API work?

Twitter’s API, or Application Programming Interface, allows software developers to directly engage with and use Twitter’s data for ad campaigns, creating targeting criteria and pulling trend analytics, according to Twitter’s developer platform.

What are the main features of the Twitter API?

The main Twitter’s API features: 

• There are four main objects of operation: Tweets, Entities, Places, and Users.
• APIs have daily restrictions regarding calls and changes that are processed by tokens in order to secure the platform from abuse. 
• It is based on HTTP commands.
• It is tailored to the social network through measures such as restrictions on libraries, generated paging, and specific parameters.

Why did Twitter start to charge for API? 

The main reason is to increase the revenue to reverse the company’s financial situation. However, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, said in a tweet that the free API is abused by bot scammers, bot traffic, and opinion manipulators. Therefore, if valid users will pay $100 a month to access API and verify their IDs, it will straighten up the process.

What are the options to access Twitter API? 

Starting February 9, 2023, Twitter no longer supports free access to the Twitter API. 

The developers and companies have three options to choose from: 

1. Standard – to be used by write-only use cases and testing purposes of the Twitter API – Free with the limit of 1,500 posts per month. 
2. Premium –  meant to be used by hobbyists and prototypes – $100 with the limit of 50,000 tweets per month. 
3. Enterprise – dedicated to businesses and scaled commercial projects – with unlimited access and cost of  $42,000 per month. 

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Why is the paid Twitter API a problem? 

Twitter’s decision to stop offering free API access to third-party developers caused several concerns among users and businesses using Twitter on a daily basis.

The change severely impacts not only researchers who may lose access to valuable information but also companies’ budgets and the ability to target users with the right message. 

Why should you use raw data as a alternative for Twitter API?

The new Twitter API offering is no doubt an attempt to increase revenue for the company. Even though it will definitely help Twitter to filter up the bot accounts and provide businesses only with real user accounts, it is still an extremely expensive option even for well-performing companies. As the business and commercial package costs around $500,000 per year. 

More and more companies are looking for Twitter API alternatives and reaching out to data provider companies who own an enormous amount of data streams which can be a great solution to maintain Twitter activities with even stronger ROI. As high quality and privacy-safe data access does not depend on an expensive price package. 

Raw Data Stream provides insights into user activity regarding visited URLs, mobile apps, timestamp, device type, language, geolocation, or shortened IP address. Raw Data contain information about user specific Interests, demographics or purchase intents. 

As Data from Twitter API comes from Raw data, therefore using competitive raw data streams can be equally valuable for companies who are looking for expensive Twitter API alternatives.

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Why is Raw Data an alternative to Twitter APIs?

Twitter API derives data from raw data and segments them into various targeting scenarios that are then available in the Twitter Developer Platform.

Twitter API data comes from users activity only within the Twitter platform. On the other hand,  Raw Data  provided by OnAudience come from various websites and applications, therefore it can provide a greater image of user interests across various online environments. 

The main advantage of using Raw Data over Twitter API is the range and scale of data as data comes from various sources and multiple trusted and privacy-safe data suppliers. Thus, businesses, advertisers, and marketers may benefit from having a full overview of user activity, allowing them to propose relevant and valuable content.

Why should you consider using Raw Data instead of Twitter API?

• Keywords and keyword-phrases — receive valuable data based on the strength of the data stream, URLs that contain specific keywords. 
• High Quality of data and GDPR & CCPA compliant — have access to privacy-safe and high quality data based on cookieless identifiers. 
• Competitive price — be charged only for target audience regions of your interest. 
• Real users base — user cookieless identification grants access only to real users accounts.
• Global unlimited data sources — access to global and high quality data partners. 
• Custom audiences — configure your target audience on as many attributes as you need. 
• Data Science Team — specify your targeting criteria and needs with help of our data science team. 
• Up-to-date data access – get data batches on a daily basis
• Historical information – use historical data for analytical purposes to examine users behavior.

What are the main features of Raw Data?

Raw data provides specific information about users activity which brings a lot of insightful information concerning the user behavior online. It has several features: 

• Reliable sources  — collecting qualitative data only from trusted and privacy-safe data partners such as:
  • Media sellers and buyers
  • Publishers
  • Social media plugins
  • Technology providers
  • Analytics solutions
  • Networks 
  • Research companies 
• High Volume and Coverage  — raw data streams offer high volume and coverage which means businesses can access large amounts of data including tweets, hashtags, interests, geolocation, user profiles, etc.
• Custom segments  — data can be segmented according to the business needs and filtered based on specific keywords, hashtags and or other criteria. It means users can access only data relevant to their specific requirements. 
• Real-time solution  —  provides data with low latency allowing users to have access to data as soon as they occur. 
• GDPR & CCPA Compliant  —  assures user protection and abides by regulations and privacy standards. 

What are the benefits of using Raw Data? 

The main benefit of using raw data is the fact that it can be applied in various contexts such as research planning, prediction, and final testing. 

It serves as a valuable source of information that can be utilized to enhance the effectiveness of these processes. The most popular fields are:

• Social Media plugins – provide access to social media data which means it can be a great alternative to APIs dedicated to a specific social media platform, especially if the initial solution is paid as Twitter API. 
• Fraud detection & scoring – can be used as source data for an anti-fraud algorithm. For instance, timestamp or amount of cookie occurrences or analysis of data points can be used within the scoring system to detect fraud or to make sure that a message receiver is not a bot (so-called Non-Human Traffic). 
• Artificial Intelligence – can be treated as a train set and a test set during AI and machine learning algorithms and building big data tools to improve marketing and business strategy.
• Profiling & personalization – is used for profiling & personalization to customize client profiles and divide them for segmentation, e.g., per gender or location (based on Data Point). The segments are used in precise targeting of online ads and sending clients personalized messages.
• Business Intelligence – is a source of information for BI systems that helps to enrich user profiles with more detailed information, e.g., purchase path or geodata. This information is good material for business analysis and predictive research.
• Targeting – data processed by data scientists can help to improve online campaigns and reach the target audience.
• CRM Data Enrichment – data can be integrated with the client’s CRM system. CRM integration provides a possibility to fill the gaps in user profiles with demographic data, interests or buying intentions. The enrichment process of CRM systems allows customers to get a full view of their clients and send highly personalized messages.

Uncover the Raw Data potential 

If you are looking for Twitter API alternatives to continue using the potential of the social media platform, you should consider getting in touch with our data science team and testing out Raw Data. 

What can you expect? 

1. Get in touch with our data science team. 
2. Tell us about the range of your data.
3. Let us configure the valid scope of data.
4. Get your data and start the testing phase. 

The Raw Data can be delivered on a daily basis in .tsv or .csv format through the SFTP or AWS uploads. Different types of uploads (i.e. GCS) are also possible. Sending the Raw Data does not require cookie matching.

Data comparison Twitter API vs Data Data

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