GNIP – Internet Infrastructure Gets a Boost

• July 3rd, 2008 /
•  Chris Schultz

I’ve been a fan of Eric Marcoullier since I first added the MyBlogLog widget to this blog a year and a half ago. He (and his partner Todd) transformed blogs into social networks and Yahoo snapped up the company last year.

Eric and I hooked up at SXSW in March to meet for the first time in person after he had reached out to offer support for the BarCamp New Orleans. I was thrilled to get a chance to spend some time with him and I asked him what he was going to be up to next.

He told me about Gnip.

The word “ping” spelled backwards. I don’t pretend to be an internet infrastructure guru, but understanding what a ping is in laymans terms, and then applying it to the vast amounts of data being piped around thanks to your activities on the social web make it clear that GNIP is going to be a welcome solution.

Just as blog ping services gave blog search engines the notification they needed to update themselves when someone posted something new, Gnip will provide this service to pipe the data from data producers like Digg and Flickr to data consumers like Plaxo and MyBlogLog.

It’s a big responsibility, it centralizes data feeds but creates dependencies. As we all understand from Twitters recent headaches, if data pipes get clogged, no one is happy. If Gnip becomes the centralized system, it will be both extremely valuable and also extremely important player. Simply put, it can’t go down. But they’ve got the best in the business (Pivotal Labs) building their infrastructure.

I wish Eric the best of luck. More details on the service here, here and here.

New Orleans Connection:

Eric went to Tulane. He has expressed to me his desire to continue to support the New Orleans tech community and nurture our growth. I know he’s be willing to come down to New Orleans for a talk or event this fall. Let’s try to get this native son back to Louisiana and learn something from him… what do you say?

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