Ever wonder what anyone has ever tweeted about you or your competitors? Most services give you a snapshot, highlighting what’s happening right now – or possibly 30 days back, but what about Twitter data from any given time period going all the way back to the first Tweet in 2006?

You can’t see those tweets unless you have access to Twitter’s firehose – or unless you use Gnip. And no, it’s not free.

All Things D reports that Gnip “announced on Wednesday that it will now offer the entirety of all archived tweets available for outside analysis. Provided, of course, that you pay to use Gnip’s new ‘historical powertrack’ product.”

The company’s original offering touted filtered search results for firms, including a 30-day “backtrack,” which allowed for viewing complete Twitter data information over the past month.

And according to TechCrunch, “the company says that [information is] only available to Twitter, the Library of Congress, and now Gnip customers.”

President and COO Chris Moody tells me that this kind of historical data has been a big request from customers. After all, it’s nice to track the social impact of a given social campaign or a real-world event, but it would be even better if you could compare that data to a competitor’s campaign a few months ago, or the same event last year. Being able to go back in time like that hasn’t been possible until now, Moody says.

(Wooden chest image from Shutterstock)