Snaptrends was reported Monday to have shut its doors after losing key access to APIs in Twitter and Facebook, but the company’s CEO says it’s alive, well and pivoting. The Austin-based company, founded in 2012, captures social media activity in defined areas and provides the information to third parties, though the passing of it to law enforcement for policing protest activity drew the ire of the social media giant.
Snaptrends CEO Eric Klasson disputed the report in The American Genius, telling Austin Inno the company is indeed still operating and maintains employees in marketing, finance, engineering, among other functions, and will focus on their corporate business. The company has stopped working with the policing efforts, however.
“Last month, Snaptrends ceased all sales and marketing to all state and local government agencies,” Klasson said in a statement to Austin Inno.
Last month, Twitter broke off deals with social media monitoring companies that provided information to law enforcement which includes Snaptrends who, according to a 2015 Austin Chronicle report, “developed its software intelligence system to serve public safety organization [sic] and national intelligence agencies in the United States.”
The ACLU of California released a report following a records request showing that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were passing along user information to Geofeedia to monitor activists and protesters. Snaptrends was mentioned in one of the records as a close competitor to Geofeedia, and the report affected a number of social media, including Snaptrends.
Snaptrends’ underlying business has come under scrutiny for its use of tracking users behavior, as Facebook recently severed ties with Geofeedia, a Chicago company that helped catch an intruder in Mark Zuckerberg’s office according to former Geofeedia employees.
