Gnip’s new Insights APIs give businesses a better idea of who their audience is

Lots of businesses use Twitter as a central hub for things like customer service, and today at its Flight developer conference, the company is introducing two new Gnip APIs to make it much easier.

Gnip, Twitter’s social information API set, is introducing a new Audience API to provide metadata on who is viewing tweets. Companies may get access to customer defined data like age, sex and geographical location.

Additionally, and engagement API lets businesses know what effect tweets may have. If a popular figure tweets that a particular airline sucks, that company may learn that and choose to address that tweet faster to minimize bad press.

Similarly, it allows the company to triage customer service based on the type of tweets being posted. If a restaurant were to be tagged in a series of tweets complaining of food poisoning, it’s likely something they should address ahead of someone complaining via Twitter about how long it takes to get a table.

Twitter understands companies use its service for customer service, and is releasing these APIs in response to feedback it has received.

“This new family of Twitter or Gnip Insights APIs from Gnip is the next step in providing global brands with the audience and content performance data they’ve been asking for” said Chris Moody, Twitter’s VP of Data Products. “We’ve worked closely with Networked Insights and NetBase to help them bring powerful new solutions to market that are built on the foundation of the Audience API.”

Gnip’s Insights APIs are rolling out today in beta.