It’s by no means a foul time to again up your knowledge. However for Twitter customers, it’s arguably extra pressing than common, what with the platform’s current … unpredictability. Mass firings and resignations, whiplash coverage adjustments and crippled infrastructure don’t instill a ton of confidence that Twitter will stay steady properly into the distant future. That’s why it’s value contemplating archiving your account for posterity.
Twitter’s lengthy supplied a software for archiving account knowledge, which at current permits you to copy your knowledge in a machine-readable format that’s moveable to a choose few different providers. However whereas the software works properly for easy backups, the archives it creates aren’t significantly consumer pleasant. There isn’t an apparent solution to rapidly set up the tens to hundreds of tweets an archive would possibly include, for example, or drill down inside an archive for particular sorts of tweets and embedded media.
Fortuitously, due to the open supply neighborhood, there’s freely out there instruments for individuals who want to train extra management over their Twitter archives. They don’t subvert Twitter’s archive request course of — you’ll want an account archive immediately from Twitter to make use of most of the instruments — however they make working with Twitter archives much less painful whereas increasing the archives’ usefulness, at the very least in principle.
Observe that not the entire instruments are essentially simple to make use of for non-developers. Many require data of Python and different programming languages, and any software that accesses Twitter’s API wants keys from a Twitter Developer account. (Disclaimer: Don’t present instruments entry to your account in case you don’t absolutely belief them.) However the instruments on the very least present primary setup directions to assist novices rise up and operating.
Managing and viewing Twitter archives
Maybe essentially the most complete of the bunch is the Twitter Archive Parser, which goals to repair and/or work round among the extra egregious flaws in Twitter’s archiving system (e.g., shortening hyperlinks, storing tweets in a fancy code construction, and many others.) The software converts tweets and even direct messages into markdown, the markup language supported by most content material administration programs and editors, and in addition HTML — full with embedded photographs, movies and hyperlinks.
The Twitter Archive Parser goes past the Twitter archiver’s barebones performance to switch shortened URLs with their unique variations, copy tweeted photographs to a folder (for simpler sorting), output lists of followers and other people you’re following and obtain photographs of their unique sizes. (By default, Twitter’s archiver swaps out full-sized photographs in tweets for smaller ones.)
If a extra user-friendly archive viewing expertise is all you’re after, nonetheless, Twitter Archive Browser suits the invoice. It shows your total Twitter timeline going again to the very first Tweet and allows you to browse direct message historical past offline. As you’d count on, Twitter Archive Browser will stay fully purposeful within the occasion you delete your Twitter account, displaying any media you’ve uploaded together with photographs and movies.
Extracting URLs, exporting bookmarks and deleting tweets
One other Python-based software, Taupe, is extra restricted in its capabilities than, say, Twitter Archive Parser. But it surely does precisely what it advertises: extracts the URLs of your tweets, retweets, replies, quote tweets and “likes” from a private Twitter archive. (Taupe is a unfastened acronym for “Twitter archive URL parser”).
Taupe takes a Twitter archive, extracts the URLs comparable to the tweets, retweets and such, and outputs the leads to a spreadsheet format that can be utilized with different software program and providers, corresponding to Web Archive’s Wayback Machine. Whereas Taupe has limitations — for instance, as a result of the Twitter archive format for “likes” doesn’t include a timestamp, Taupe can’t know or present precisely when particular person tweets have been appreciated — it’s one of many easiest methods to rapidly convert historic Twitter knowledge right into a extra useable format.
As a complement to Taupe, there’s the self-descriptive Export your Twitter Bookmarks software, which saves all of your Twitter bookmarks — together with pictures and movies and absolutely expanded URLs connected to tweets — in a markdown file. (Twitter archives don’t embody bookmarked tweets.) And for bulk-deleting tweets in an archive, Twitter Archive Browser turns out to be useful. It will probably auto-delete tweets in a sure timeframe or containing sure key phrases.
Of us in want of extra exhaustive Twitter timeline pruning will need to attempt Twitter Cleaner, which might mechanically delete tweets, retweets and favorites from an archive. Twitter Cleaner can even take away entries from an lively timeline however that requires a Twitter developer account.
Organizing particular issues, like pictures
What in case you’re solely curious about particular artifacts out of your Twitter account, like pictures? Whereas there’s no approach round downloading your total account archive, some instruments assist to floor solely the gadgets of curiosity inside that archive.
For instance, Twitter Photo Downloader processes your Twitter archive to create an area database containing all of your pictures. It’ll even work for picture galleries and pictures from retweets, albeit not for movies and GIFs. (You’ll see a single nonetheless body rather than a GIF.) Twitter Archive Parser is much more stripped down. The software converts particular person tweets in an archive into PDFs for storage functions.
Properly — that’s all of the open supply instruments we’ve noticed for managing Twitter archives thus far. If we missed any, be happy to ship us an e mail and we’ll see about including it to the listing.
