Twitter has just announced that it has opened up its full data feed of all public tweets -- a.k.a. the "Firehose" -- to seven new startups, and is looking to partner with more to give them access to the data.
Currently, only a few partners have access to one of Twitter's most valuable assets: its stream of tweets. They include search giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. It's believed that these deals have already made Twitter profitable.
But now Twitter is looking to foster innovation from some of its third party developers, starting with several real-time search and discovery startups.
Starting today, seven new partners will have access to Twitter's full firehose: Twazzup, Collecta, CrowdEye, Scoopler, Kosmix, Chainn Search and Ellerdale. This means that these companies will have the full feed of tweets to augment their search results. Collecta searches, for example, could now display all recent posts mentioning Mashable, rather than be rate limited as most Twitter apps currently are.