[willu]

I have no love for Twitter, Gnip, or the way they've treated API devs over the years but this particular use case (ranking emojis by frequency of use) seems like it could be just as well served by the free sampled stream. I can't imagine anyone needing the exact usage counts vs. the relative popularity. Also, the author's stated goal of making it open and immediately usable by other developers would be better served by using the access level that is freely available to everyone.

[TheHappyRock]

Agreed, I don't think the full stream is needed either. It think being built of the free stream will serve the needs of making it open and still provide interesting data. Relative(sampling) usage graphs even seem more digestable and interesting to me.