Twitter

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Twitter
Twitter account timeline.png
URL http://twitter.com
Status Online!
Archiving status Not saved yet
Archiving type Unknown
IRC channel #archiveteam-bs (on hackint)

Twitter is a microblogging service. With each "entry" being 140 characters or less, the ease with which you can track the tiniest details of your life is amazing. The site has become very popular as a result.

The site is becoming so popular, in fact, that many people are deserting or cutting back on their weblogs to just use the Twitter service for what their weblogging used to fulfill; and with that comes rampant centralization, and with that, greater risk. Back up your tweets!

Archives

There are currently a few archives (but only partially):

The Twitter search API seemingly returns only the latest 7 days worth of tweets.

Backup Tools

  • t by sferik is a command-line interface for Twitter using the API via an application you create on your account. Not only does it allow easy CSV/JSON export of your own data, but it allows you to scrape others tweets. API limits apply but this tool is very powerful

Twitter automatically resizes uploaded images. To get image in its original resolution, append :orig after the url, e.g.:

   https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBAoaU1UwAIUPIc.jpg:orig

When using ArchiveBot, the following arguments are helpful:

--phantomjs --ignore-sets twitter

It is also important to add a trailing slash to the URL, so it gets each tweet individually, rather than only trying to download the whole timeline.

  • The Python Twitter API by sixohsix has some pretty easy to use scripts for archiving Twitter accounts to a TXT file for people who aren't as technically inclined. It can only save the last 3K or so tweets due to inbuilt Twitter limits, though. (Note: the "-o" flag is pretty much required to archive accounts.)

Scraping

See Site exploration for details.

Vital Signs

Very stable, probably not going anywhere too soon without warning.

Library of Congress

The U.S. Library of Congress announced in April 2010, via its official Twitter account that it will be acquiring the entire archive of Twitter messages back through March 2006.[1] As of 2016-02-23, this archive is still not available, and when/if it does become accessible it will likely be restricted to researchers, rather than the general public.[2] In January 2017, it was announced that the Library of Congress will no longer archive all tweets, just ones from major news stories.

External links