Will Twitter Data Grants Change the Future of how Research is Conducted?

Yesterday, Twitter announced a pilot project their calling Twitter Data Grants.

The news is still buzzing today over Twitter news feeds from people like @NiemanLab

and @mathewi (Mathew Ingram).  

These data grants will allow researchers outside of the Twitter company

full access to the "5 million tweets a day" Twitter says they have to offer.  

Researchers will now be able to gain access to the public data and historical

tweets Twitter holds in their hand.  Within Twitters blog post, they use the 

example of researchers gaining access to information on health and world 

events that have been tweeted about on the social media platform.  Twitter 

believes their Data Grants program will connect research institutions with the

data they need to learn about specific topics.  

With this being the launch of Twitters new program they will only be selecting

a few number of research proposals to receive this free "dataset", since this is the

first test run of the new program.  They are asking that proposals be submitted no

later than March 15th to this page.  

So will this new Data Grant project change the future of how research is conducted?

Will researchers now turn to social media for their answers, like so many other

companies and organizations have?  We will have to wait and see just how much 

researchers can benefit from the use of social media in their work.  However, one 

thing is certain, times are changing, and it can be said that today, more than ever,

social media is utilized in so many new ways people never thought would be possible

before.  It is clear that social media is becoming a predominate part of our society, 

culture and life.