Avid users to the popular twittering hub would soon be able to download all of their tweets since they have opened their account, and some lucky users have already started doing so.
The feature, ascertained to be on the roadmap before 2012 was done by Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo, is still believed to be progressively rolling out to users – presumably to avoid a server storm of eager archivists – but will seemingly work much as Facebook’s system works.
As a matter of fact, the initial news of the new option that appeared in the wild was from user
href=”https://twitter.com/Psilosophy/”>@Psilosophy, who revealed where the option supposedly can be found for those who have it enabled – at the bottom of your Settings page.
Almost everyone has access to a few thousand tweets they have posted to the site, but the ability to download all of your tweets is only available to a select few users so far into an archive that resembles a calendar. You can browse your tweets by month and search the full archive. Who would make use of this? Certainly, it will be a big help to people who are interested in chronicling their lives.
To confirm if the feature has been already activated for your account, go to Twitter settings. Scroll down to “Your Twitter Archive”. Then you can download all of your tweets. When the download archive is ready, Twitter will email you a download link. Then you can get a zip file with the archive in the html format. If you extract the zip file (by clicking on it), you will see all of your tweets in chronological order.
Indian blogger Navjot Singh is one of the first to have access to the new feature, and he described his experience so far in his blog: Singh says he found the option to download those tweets by going to his settings page, where he saw this new option, captured in a screenshot:
“We are happy to let you know that the archive you requested is now available for download. Your archive may contain sensitive content. So please keep that in mind before sharing it with anyone.”
Twitter has finally provided the option to download all your tweets – twitter.com/nspeaks/status…
— Navjot Singh (@nspeaks) December 16, 2012
Nevertheless, the move brings Twitter in line with other organizations that allow export of data they create. Saying that “Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products,” Google’s Data Liberation Front tool is designed “to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products” such as Gmail and Google Drive. Facebook’s Download Your Information allows users to get a copy of what they have shared on Facebook, such as photos, posts, messages, friends list, and chat conversations.