What value was there for DataSift to resell Twitter data and take a cut? What could possibly be in it for Twitter? In fact it's worse on two dimensions. First, financial (DataSift apparently gets an 80% cut). Second, DS gets the lock-in and "commoditizes" Twitter's offering, by putting it right beside a dozen other "sources". It's obvious that this deal was just just market evaluation or laziness on Twitter's part, or at best, wanting to keep a barrier between them and the data seller in case things went wrong. DataSift had a time-limited contract and it ran out. Their competitor (Gnip) apparently delivered a useful product by spending far less money.

(Of note is that FB's new sentiment analysis data product is being trialed via DataSift. This feels like a similar thing, with the added benefit that if it goes sour ("omg FB is literally selling our data/feelings"), they've got a slight degree of separation. Plus faster time to market etc. (Note that this didn't help DatSift's sudden loss of FB connectivity the other month, as FB dropped an API when they felt like it.)

On Meerkat, they were flagrantly disobeying the rules Twitter had set forth. They knew they were going to get in trouble, but "growth hacking". Related: Maybe my awesome search engine that just frontends Google isn't a great idea either.

That there's any sympathy or surprise here is confusing to me.