I have some bad news to share.

At midnight on June 30, the publicly-available NeedTagger apps are going offline, permanently.  

This includes our web app and HootSuite app.

However, our Social Signals API will remain online. A special version of our web app will be made available to all API users for building and testing custom stream filters.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. I understand that you may rely on NeedTagger for business development. If there was another viable path to keep NeedTagger online, I would have chosen it.

Why We’re Doing This

You may have noticed that NeedTagger has experienced service failures and stream volume problems recently.

These events are related to our struggle behind the scenes to keep fresh Twitter data (tweets) flowing into the apps at full-firehose levels and to process them in real time for intent. Doing what we do requires a reliable, high speed and stable supply of tweets.

Unfortunately, our Twitter data supply has become unreliable over the past few months. This, in turn, has created an unacceptable user experience for many of our customers. We have now exhausted all affordable options to resolve the issue.

So, I’ve decided to shut the apps down rather than deliver an unreliable service. It’s just the right thing to do.

What to Expect

  • on June 30th, the NeedTagger HootSuite app and web app will no longer accept logins
  • on July 1, our HootSuite app will be removed from HootSuite’s app directory
  • paying customers will not be billed for June; if you have been billed for days in June, your credit card will be refunded for those days.
  • our website and blog will remain online for now

For Our API Users

The data supply issue does not impact our Social Signals API, because you supply your own data for processing.

However, you will no longer have access to live Twitter data in NeedTagger to build and test your custom filters.

Alternatives To NeedTagger

Here are a few Twitter prospecting/lead generation tools you may want to consider:

  • Leadsift – most similar to us, but they don’t cover as many industries, paid service
  • Socedo – automatically build an audience of leads, paid service
  • Hootsuite – use advanced search options, free service

Final Thoughts

We developed NeedTagger to help you find people who may need your help by tagging the conversations that matter.

To do that, we developed a proprietary form of real-time natural language processing that lets anyone create their own customer prospecting stream in minutes and see the results immediately.

After we released our apps, we quickly learned that the best business use of our tool was in assisting in customer prospecting, performance marketing and business development. Since launching in 2012, we’ve helped more than 7,000 marketing and sales professionals, consultants, agencies and business owners do just that.

So, while I am sad to see NeedTagger go dark, I’m also proud of what we’ve accomplished. Working with you, we’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that sales prospecting in social media works – as long as you focus on helping people solve problems and avoid the hard-sell.

Which, of course, is how great sales people do their job in the real world.

I want to especially thank my co-founders, Charles Armour, Andrew Wagner and Daryl Tucker. Without your creativity, hard work and dedication to our mission, NeedTagger would never have helped so many.

Thank you for your support,

Vernon Niven

CEO & founder

NeedTagger.com