Twitter Archive Opens: Some Users Can Download All Their Tweets

A Twitter archive service promised by the micro-blogging giant has been delivered, letting users download  their entire tweet history – but so far the feature is only available to an apparently random group of users.

CEO Dick Costolo has repeatedly said this year the feature would be active, but had not given a specific date.  The service finally went live over the weekend, but only for a limited number of users, allowing them to get hold of all the tweets they ever posted in a tidy package, rather than having to trawl through their Twitter history.

This reporter cannot currently access his Twitter archive, and Twitter has not fully explained the process of rolling out the function.

Twitter archive coming soon

Favoured users can get hold of their personal archives by clicking a link in their settings. Twitter will then notify them by email when the file is ready, offering a link to a download.

This could be hugely beneficial for businesses who want to review their social media campaigns. Various companies have already sought to mine Twitter to gain a better insight into brand management.

In March, social media data research firms Gnip and DataSift, which had both formed partnerships with Twitter, said they were able to go through tweet archives and find relevant information for clients. Both were selling mined data in packages and DataSift it was able to trawl tweets as old as two years.

Facebook already lets users get at their data by downloading it in one file. That still hasn’t appeased some outraged by Facebook privacy – the company is now being taken to court in Ireland by a group claiming the social network should be bound by law to protect users’ secrecy.

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