F**k yeah APIs: Tumblr’s API is now exclusively available through Gnip

Those API wizards at Gnip are tearing it up: First, they added Facebook Graph support. Then, they got exclusive rights to redistribute the Twitter Firehose. And now, they are announcing another exclusive deal with Tumblr.

“I’m thrilled to announce that the full firehose of public Tumblr posts is now available exclusively from Gnip,” writes Gnip COO Chris Moody today on the company blog.

“Our customers want us to be everywhere public online conversations are happening, and Tumblr plays a huge part in that strategy,” a Gnip spokesperson told VentureBeat this morning. “With all of the conversations happening on Tumblr, our customers have been clamoring for access to their firehose.”

“The conversations on Tumblr are rich in images and discussion about brands and products, from simply sharing a picture about a favorite pair of shoes to reblogging news about favorite brand,” Moody continued on the blog. “And given the highly social nature of the Tumblr community, these discussions move quickly and broadly through the community.”

Moody also shares some interesting Tumblr stats: The network sees 50 million new posts each day and has had 20 billion posts since its inception. Tumblr blogs account for 15 billion pageviews each month, and traffic grew by a healthy 300 percent last year.

Earlier this year, Tumblr CEO David Karp said the service had reached 120 million unique visitors each month, as well.

“We’re excited to be able to offer Tumblr to our customers and can’t wait to see what other intriguing use cases they find for this data,” Moody concludes.

Over the past year, Tumblr has experienced a few “whoopsies” in the API department, including a couple high-profile takedowns of websites Tumblr said were using the APIs inappropriately. In fact, the company recently tried hiring a new API lead to deal with these issues.

Gnip is becoming something of a go-to vendor for large social companies’ APIs. “This year we’ve really focused on expanding our social data sources including adding data from WordPress, Disqus, Sina Weibo, and now Tumblr,” said our Gnip source, highlighting the company’s web-wide ambitions.

The startup’s watershed moment happened when Gnip partnered with Twitter back in 2010 to give commercial API developers better access to the Twitter Firehose and filtered data from the Firehose. Gnip was the first authorized reseller of Twitter’s APIs and data.

As Twitter notes in its documentation, “The Firehose is not a generally available resource. Few applications require this level of access.” The parties who do need Firehose access are generally large analytics firms, and for the most part, they go through Gnip; DataSift is the only other redistributor of Twitter’s Firehose API.

Image courtesy of ra2 studio, Shutterstock

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