Twitter is granting a handful of research institutions access to its public and historical data which will allow them to get insights on a wide variety of issues.
As part of the latest pilot ‘Twitter Data Grants’ project, Twitter would accept proposals until 15 March 2014, and would then select a small number of recipients on 15 April 2014.
The micro-blogging site has also collaborated with data reseller Gnip to allow institutions to freely access to Twitter datasets.
The selected research institutions will also be allowed to team up with Twitter engineers and researchers on specific projects.
Twitter platform engineering vice president Raffi Krikorian said that with more than 500 million Tweets a day, Twitter has an expansive set of data that allows gleaning insights and learn about a variety of topics, from health-related information such as when and where the flu may hit to global events like ringing in the new year.
"To date, it has been challenging for researchers outside the company who are tackling big questions to collaborate with us to access our public, historical data," Krikorian said.
"Our Data Grants program aims to change that by connecting research institutions and academics with the data they need," Krikorian said.
Twitter data has already been used by a number of researchers to detect major developments in areas ranging from epidemiology, natural disaster response, international relations, financial markets, journalism and politics.