Twitter has sold its old tweets to DataSift, a company that plans to analyze the tweets for marketing purposes. DataSift is the first company to get access to these tweets which go back two years. According to one article, DataSift has “launched a product called DataSift Historics, which lets companies extract insights and trends that relate to brands, businesses, financial markets, news and public opinion, a rep says. DataSift will analyze public tweets, not private ones. If you delete a tweet, it’s deleted from DataSift’s archives.”

The article adds, “Selling old tweets would be one way to monetize Twitter’s archive. So far, Twitter’s focus has been on building revenues by advertising to its 100 million or so active monthly members rather than selling its data. Twitter makes the bulk of its revenues through advertising. A private company, Twitter doesn’t disclose its finances. However, eMarketer estimates that Twitter will earn about $259.9 million this year and $399.5 million in 2013.”

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Image: Courtesy DataSift