Taupe takes a Twitter archive, extracts the URLs corresponding to the tweets, retweets and such, and outputs the results in a spreadsheet format that can be used with other software and services, such as Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. (Taupe is a loose acronym for “ Twitter archive URL pars er”). But it does exactly what it advertises: extracts the URLs of your tweets, retweets, replies, quote tweets and “likes” from a personal Twitter archive. As you’d expect, Twitter Archive Browser will remain completely functional in the event you delete your Twitter account, showing any media you’ve uploaded including images and videos.Įxtracting URLs, exporting bookmarks and deleting tweetsĪnother Python-based tool, Taupe, is more limited in its capabilities than, say, Twitter Archive Parser. It displays your entire Twitter timeline going back to the very first Tweet and lets you browse direct message history offline. If a more user-friendly archive viewing experience is all you’re after, however, Twitter Archive Browser fits the bill. (By default, Twitter’s archiver swaps out full-sized images in tweets for smaller ones.) The Twitter Archive Parser goes beyond the Twitter archiver’s barebones functionality to replace shortened URLs with their original versions, copy tweeted images to a folder (for easier sorting), output lists of followers and people you’re following and download images in their original sizes. Perhaps the most comprehensive of the bunch is the Twitter Archive Parser, which aims to fix and/or work around some of the more egregious flaws in Twitter’s archiving system (e.g., shortening links, storing tweets in a complex code structure, etc.) The tool converts tweets and even direct messages into markdown, the markup language supported by most content management systems and editors, and also HTML - complete with embedded images, videos and links. (Disclaimer: Don’t provide tools access to your account if you don’t fully trust them.) But the tools at the very least provide basic setup instructions to help novices get up and running. Many require knowledge of Python and other programming languages, and any tool that accesses Twitter’s API needs keys from a Twitter Developer account. Note that not all of the tools are necessarily easy to use for non-developers. They don’t subvert Twitter’s archive request process - you’ll need an account archive directly from Twitter to use many of the tools - but they make working with Twitter archives less painful while expanding the archives’ usefulness, at least in theory. There isn’t an obvious way to quickly organize the tens to thousands of tweets an archive might contain, for instance, or drill down within an archive for specific types of tweets and embedded media.įortunately, thanks to the open source community, there’s freely available tools for those who wish to exercise more control over their Twitter archives. But while the tool works well for simple backups, the archives it creates aren’t particularly user friendly. Twitter’s long offered a tool for archiving account data, which at present allows you to copy your data in a machine-readable format that’s portable to a select few other services. That’s why it’s worth considering archiving your account for posterity. Mass firings and resignations, whiplash policy changes and crippled infrastructure don’t instill a ton of confidence that Twitter will remain stable well into the distant future. But for Twitter users, it’s arguably more urgent than usual, what with the platform’s recent … unpredictability. It’s never a bad time to back up your data.
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