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Twitter Enables Archive Option

Posted by samzenpus on from the read-it-and-weep dept.

judgecorp writes "Twitter has delivered on a long-promised feature which allows some users to download their entire Tweet history. The service was promised months ago by CEO Dick Costolo and equivalent features are already available at Facebook. At this stage, only some users can download their archive, and it's not clear how it will be rolled out to all users."

25 comments

  1. Well thank goodness! by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was mortally afraid all that wisdom would be lost forever. Sheesh...

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  2. Ah, just what I wanted... by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Because there are soooooooooooooooooo many important tweets worth of archiving...

    1. Re:Ah, just what I wanted... by ikaruga · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, the US Library of Congress genuinely think so

    2. Re:Ah, just what I wanted... by garcia · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just like e-mails I've received in say, oh, the last 5 years? There are just as few e-mails I should really be saving as tweets made but yet I have an archive of every e-mail sent or received since 6/22/2004 and a spotty archive of everything I've sent or received since 1994.

      Let me tell you how useful the e-mails goes back to 1994 have been: I once found a deviled egg recipe my (at the time) future wife sent me in college. Man deviled eggs are yummy.

      YMMV.

    3. Re:Ah, just what I wanted... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HEY, those Kim Kardasian swimsuit tweets are worth archiving!!!!!!!

  3. Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    His name is "Dick"

    1. Re:Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      His name is Richard, now why people with that name like to be nicknamed with a slang for penis is a different subject.

    2. Re:Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well it's one letter off "Dick Costolot", an apt description for pretty much any CEO.

    3. Re:Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair, Dick Costolo is actually a pretty cool guy. Not your typical CEO at all.

  4. How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "...not clear HOW it will be rolled out to all users."

    Presumably, someone at Twitter ticks the 'enable for all users' box. As to WHEN that will happen, perhaps that's the more pertinent question.

    1. Re:How? by vlm · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've read numerous articles claiming that 99% or whatever twitter accounts have either one or zero tweets sent. Probably 99% of them are spammer accounts but 1% of them might be like my account, join up, WTF is this, bye bye, never log in again.

      My guess is to control DB load you roll it out by archive size gradually. So corporate PR team who has sent 150K tweets gets it today, then drop the limit by 1K pre day or whatever...

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    2. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's pretty much it, actually. Roll out n%, then m+n%, etc while making sure that the feature isn't insecure and doesn't bring the site down.

  5. I just downloaded my twitter archive. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    It was easy because I don't use twitter.

  6. Trash it all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The download should just pipe everything to /dev/null. Nothing of value will be lost except for tons of people talking about how they are taking a dump after eating some pizza.

    1. Re:Trash it all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't think you know what "except" means.

  7. Figures. by eddy · · Score: 1

    Takes time to figure out how to do "SELECT date,text FROM twitters WHERE user_id=num;" #webscale #nosql

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  8. Wait what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still no mention of an option to block the library of congress from archiving all your tweets for all prosperity forever.

    Remembering to use #n in every tweet simply isn't good enough.

    1. Re:Wait what? by boarder8925 · · Score: 1

      You could make your tweets private. It's a shit option, but at least there is one. Of course, there's no guarantee that making your tweets private actually keeps you out of the archive, but ostensibly it is possible.

      --
      Keep your eyes to the sky.
  9. More importantly, by assertation · · Score: 1

    More importantly, can you delete all of your old tweets, as in having them be completely off of Twitters severs?

    1. Re:More importantly, by fermion · · Score: 1

      What I would like to see is a die date. An option where tweets can be permanantly and automatically deleted after so many days, months, hours, whatever.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  10. you can already do this with twournal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://twournal.com/

    You can download a .pdf styled book or even get a hard copy (although it's kids of pricey)

  11. Shoot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought this was a way to finally DELETE your archive. Dang.

  12. Way to compete, Twitter! by Minwee · · Score: 1

    equivalent features are already available at Facebook

    You mean you can click a button hidden several layers deep in an obscure settings menu, then wait a few hours for an incomplete archive containing only content from the last month to be emailed to you? That's amazing.

  13. Not A "Twitter" Service by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    TFA leads to another article, which says two companies are willing to SELL you your own old tweets.

    That's not a "twitter service". It's just bullshit. Unless you are really keen to buy copies of stuff you wrote yourself.