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Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

zachholman.com

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Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#41

Post by moron4hire »

Legion wrote: post #35
moron4hire wrote: post #23

If I whisper the most beautiful poem over the telephone to my lover today, am I going to complain about the phone company not archiving that call properly when I want to revisit it 20 years from now? You go into Twitter knowing it's about the ebb and flow of current conversation, not about what was said when it first came out. If Twitter wants to eventually offer that, that's cool, but that's not the case right now,…

While everything you said is correct, at the same time, there's no sense in losing access to data that's recorded and is sitting right there for the taking, if only there were a more convenient way to extract it. It would be very wise of Twitter to offer a bulk export function - not because they have to, but because it's to Twitter's benefit to not have me thinking twice about whether I should post to Twitter or comm…

From Twitter's perspective, you're absolutely right. From a user's perspective, the bulk reliance on singular companies to manage our data is an issue that I'm afraid is going to become dangerous.

Look at the 2.5 hour Facebook outage from a couple of days ago. If Facebook were to be hit by an airplane or asteroid, a seriously significant portion of 500,000,000 peoples' lives would be lost, if only just in photos. If my house were to have the same thing happen, 150 people would experience a somewhat lesser loss.

I have thousands of emails between close friends in Gmail that I would like to preserve, but no convenient system exists for archiving them away from Google. The point of archive is to have redundant systems on which to rely. Archiving my Gmail with Google is therefore not an archive since it's still only one system.

It's like leaving a tasty pork chop in the 'fridge at work and expecting the cleaning lady to not toss it over the weekend. I really think archive should be the responsibility of the user.

Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#43

Post by moron4hire »

holman wrote: post #38
moron4hire wrote: post #23

If I whisper the most beautiful poem over the telephone to my lover today, am I going to complain about the phone company not archiving that call properly when I want to revisit it 20 years from now? You go into Twitter knowing it's about the ebb and flow of current conversation, not about what was said when it first came out. If Twitter wants to eventually offer that, that's cool, but that's not the case right now,…

I agree, for the most part. But there's some subtleties: 1. Yes, Twitter's real-time just like the phone, but it's not only real-time like the phone. You can revisit any tweet you like. They support viewing old tweets, they support listing old tweets. My only concern is that they place limits on how much they list. 2. Yes, we're responsible for our content, but the significance of services change over time. Tomorrow'…

Does it make sense to rely on the original provider for archive? As I say in my other reply to the other replier, I really think diversity in archive options is important to the overall infrastructure of the 'Net.

Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#44

Post by Groxx »

grinich wrote: post #30
rythie wrote: post #14

The library of congress has them, if we could get a copy we could index it all somewhere to re-construct a copy of people's early timelines http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/04/how-tweet-it-is-library-acq... I was thinking recently about getting all the tweets from 2006, it should be about 2 million tweets, so should be possible to fetch by sequentially walking through the ids.

This is great. It's going to be a goldmine for historians in a few years. Twitter is becoming a finger on the pulse of the world.

Only in that we'll be able to look back and, definitively, say that, yes, we have always been as stupid as we are now, with no discernible difference.

Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#45

Post by scott_s »

holman wrote: post #38
moron4hire wrote: post #23

If I whisper the most beautiful poem over the telephone to my lover today, am I going to complain about the phone company not archiving that call properly when I want to revisit it 20 years from now? You go into Twitter knowing it's about the ebb and flow of current conversation, not about what was said when it first came out. If Twitter wants to eventually offer that, that's cool, but that's not the case right now,…

I agree, for the most part. But there's some subtleties: 1. Yes, Twitter's real-time just like the phone, but it's not only real-time like the phone. You can revisit any tweet you like. They support viewing old tweets, they support listing old tweets. My only concern is that they place limits on how much they list. 2. Yes, we're responsible for our content, but the significance of services change over time. Tomorrow'…

They place limits on how much they list for, most likely, technical difficulties with guaranteeing full history access.

This means that if you want a full history of your tweets, then it's your responsibility to maintain it. Would it be a good service to its users if Twitter maintained full history? Yes, but that's not your argument. Your argument is that it's a user's right.

Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#46

Post by davidedicillo »

dangrossman wrote: post #31
JimEngland wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found it! Googled "biz stone twootball" http://twitter.com/biz/status/976238704

"The website at www.twootball.com appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that hosts malware can infect your computer."

sigh... yeah I need to take that project back to life. The iPhone app is still alive but the site was put on hold because we didn't have enough resources.

Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#47

Post by davidedicillo »

JimEngland wrote: post #15
davidedicillo wrote: post #5

I completely agree. I saved the link to a tweet from Biz Stone about an app i launched 2 years ago (twootball), but now it's gone.

Found it! Googled "biz stone twootball" http://twitter.com/biz/status/976238704

I guess last time I checked they had problems with the favorites

Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#48

Post by tommorris »

commanda wrote: post #10

I've heard (second-hand) that Twitter isn't discarding users' tweets after they hit 3,200, they just don't provide API access to them. They're still sitting in a DB somewhere, just inaccessible currently, until Twitter provides access to them.

Yes, back when they were using an RDBMS they said that once they had moved over fully to Cassandra, the 3,200 limit was going to be lifted. Someone I know that works at Twitter now was always going on about Twitter archiving and had written Python scripts for backing tweets up... So there might be some hope.

Keep on banging on at Twitter about it as users. It is your data, so demand it back from Twitter!

Re: Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets

#49

Post by rythie »

jasonjei wrote: post #6

Well, I think you just found a way for Twitter to make some money. Remove the theoretical access and Web limit for accounts or increase limit to impossibly high number. It is much akin to NYT charging for access to old articles. They may have to store more tweets in the current database or charge a retrieval fee to obtain it from the archive. They could give it away for free too...

That's like what Flickr do by letting you browse the last 200 photos unless you get a pro account.
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