Twitter settles lawsuit with Peoplebrowsr over firehose data

Twitter has settled a dispute with Peoplebrowsr over access to the company’s firehose of data.

“We’re pleased to have this matter dismissed with prejudice, and look forward to PeopleBrowsr’s transition by the end of the year off of the Firehose to join the ecosystem of developers utilizing Twitter data via our reseller partnerships,” as Twitter spokesperson told The Next Web.

The news was first reported by AllThingsD.

Peoplebrowsr filed suit against Twitter last November, claiming it had spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours of development while relying on “Twitter’s promise of openness”. Twitter’s stance had been to refer the company to resellers such as Gnip or Datasift because it wanted to move away from “direct-to-user” firehose contracts.

Last month, a federal court decided it didn’t have jurisdiction over the case and sent the suit back to the California state court.

We’ve also reached out to Peoplebrowsr regarding the settlement.

Update: We’ve spoken with Kred CEO Andrew Grill who tells us that PeopleBrowsr is happy with the arrangement. It has come to an agreement with Twitter so that PeopleBrowsr will maintain its current access to the firehose through the end of the year and then will move to one of the third-party resellers, like Gnip and DataSift. At this time, Grill says that they have not entered into negotiations with any of the resellers, but since it’s 8 months away, the company feels it has plenty of time.

As the case was settled, all temporary restraining orders have been dismissed and no further litigation exists between the two companies.

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