A couple days ago, we noted that real time search engine Scoopler was pivoting away from that product and transforming into JustSpotted, a celebrity tracking site. A key to this new service is the use of Twitter data (alongside Foursquare and Facebook data) to track where celebrities are around the world in real time. The plan was for JustSpotted to use their Scoopler technology alongside their access to the Twitter firehose to make this all work. Well, they’re going to have to pivot that plan as well.
Twitter has just informed us that due to the pivot, they are terminating their agreement with Scoopler/JustSpotted. Here’s the full statement:
JustSpotted, then known as Scoopler, had previously licensed Twitter’s ‘firehose’ data feed of all public tweets for its real-time search engine, Scoopler.com. JustSpotted.com is not the product we licensed, and we have terminated their agreement.
Fair enough, it is a total and complete pivot, so it is certainly reasonable to Twitter to pull their data feed. What’s odd is that JustSpotted didn’t think about this problem beforehand.
Some of this might have to do with the fact that this morning, Hollywood Reporter ran a misleading story titled “Twitter investor backs celebrity-tracking site“. While it’s technically true that angel investor Ron Conway does back JustSpotted, that’s because he invested a year ago when it was still Scoopler. This story makes it sound as if a prominent investor in Twitter is investing in JustSpotted because of the new idea and the use of Twitter. That’s not the case.
That story also quotes JustSpotted co-founder AJ Asver as saying, “We’ve been working very closely with Twitter for two years. We’re one of a handful of companies that has that sort of relationship with them.” Yeah, Twitter probably didn’t like that quote too much.
Update: Here’s the statement from JustSpotted on the matter:
The relationship we had with Twitter was for our real-time search product. Justspotted is a new product which is not associated with this relationship. JustSpotted continues to aggregate updates from lots of sources including Twitter, where we have always been using their publicly available APIs.
The artist-formerly-known-as Scoopler is a real-time search engine. It aggregates and organizes content being shared on the Internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. It does this by constantly indexing live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and more. When users search for a topic on Scoopler, they get the most relevant results, updated in real-time. Scoopler has...
Created in 2006, Twitter is a global real-time communications platform with 400 million monthly visitors to twitter.com, more than 200 million monthly active users around the world. We see a billion tweets every 2.5 days on every conceivable topic. World leaders, major athletes, star performers, news organizations and entertainment outlets are among the millions of active Twitter accounts through which users can truly get the pulse of the planet.
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