
In this two-part series we present our take on the state of historical data for social media monitoring providers and why historical data might not matter anyway.
I speak to many people about the monitoring and analysis of social media data. The question of historical data is almost always a part of those conversations. Most specifically, people will ask “Do you, Looxii, offer historical social media data?”

What I take them to mean is “If I create a Looxii search for ‘Brand X’ today, will I be able to see what people were saying about ‘Brand X’ in Q1 of 2009 on Twitter?” We don’t offer much historical data out of the gate and the reason is simple: we just can’t.
Certain sources that we work with, like Twitter and Facebook, set limits on the amount of historical data we can retrieve when we first save a search. That constraint is built into the terms of service for all commercial services using their (Twitter and Facebook) APIs.
We do provide access to a lot of data sources and we store every mention as soon as a search is saved, for as long as a customer is our customer. If you’re searching for “Brand X” with Looxii right now that data will be available to you years later, provided your checks don’t bounce.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Products that do offer access to comprehensive historical data at the start of a monitoring engagement have most likely negotiated for custom terms of service and possess the serious backend cojones to store all of Twitter (which is at about a billion tweets a week) or they are working with an indexing service (3rd-party cojones).
if you want serious historical data… you better have some serious dough
Regardless, providing historical data equates to a major commitment of technological and/or financial resources. For the end user that means if you want serious historical data on day one of your campaign, you better have some serious dough.
Other services offer affordable access to historical data, but unless they follow the formula above, the best you’re going to get is a relatively tiny, and sometimes irrelevant, sample.
When the time comes to woo a client or launch a campaign, does historical social media data really matter? I would venture to say most of the time it absolutely doesn’t and I’m going to tell you why in part 2…
Photo creds to Flickr users rafaelmarquez and tpholland