As you know, our snapshot reports - both the free and full versions - are built on the Twitter Search API. Ever since we ran the first snapshot report in April 2009, the Search API has been a great resource, providing a quick glimpse into recently posted tweets. It allows us to deliver a simple, useful report for little to no cost to you. Over the years, Twitter has grown astronomically and the Search API has changed to accomodate that growth, mostly by focusing more on providing relevant results, and not full-coverage results. Already, the Search API is limited to up to 1,500 tweets from the past week or so, and is not guaranteed to include 100% coverage of all tweets for your keywords.
Well, Twitter's API has changed again and we're adapting our reports to fit the new updates. The latest change impacts how we handle native retweets.
Native - or automated - retweets are the newer-style retweets generated when you click the RT button in your Twitter client and repost another user's tweet with no intervention or adaption. These are opposed to the manual retweets that happen when you copy and paste or otherwise adapt another person's tweets. The Search API no longer includes full coverage of all native RTs, and this change impacts all tools built on the Search API. This means it impacts our snapshot reports, but not our Trackers or premium historical analytics.
Starting now, all snapshot reports will include a slightly limited set of native retweets. Our full snapshot reports will include up to 100 native RTs for each of the 15 most important tweets in a report. Free (100-tweet) snapshot reports will include up to 100 native RTs for each of the 5 most important tweets in a report. This change does not impact manual, copy/paste type retweets or modified retweets. For most of you, this will provide more than enough coverage to include all retweets, since it's quite rare to see a tweet with more than 100 retweets.
However, if your report will be one of these that is affected by this change, we do have some full-coverage options! Read on.
Full coverage options
If you're looking for full-fidelity analytics with total tweet and retweet coverage and no volume limits, we have two great options beyond our snapshot reports. If you want to monitor tweets in real-time, our TweetReach Pro Trackers are built on Gnip's Powertrack stream and are perfect for tracking your tweets as they happen. There's more about TweetReach Pro by Union Metrics here.
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