lunes, 18 de febrero de 2013

Twitter Archives: A Window on Social Media’s Rise and My Past

Mashable OP-ED

What a trip! I've been walking back in time through seven years of tweets and it's quite a revelation. No wonder I didn't believe in Twitter in 2007. I fundamentally misunderstood it, just like I didn't quite get how Twitter chose to give access to archival Tweets. It seemed so counterintuitive.

I may have been wrong.

Gaining access to my Tweets took forever. Perhaps it's because I've tweeted over 26,000 times in seven years. Combing through all that blather must take some time. In any case, a couple of days ago, a note offering me access to my Twitter archive appeared under my Twitter settings. I hit the request button and waited for an email notification. The Twitter confirmation box warned me it could take a while to compile the archives, but I got the access link in a matter of minutes.

The link led to a 30 MB zip file, which I downloaded to my local hard drive. To use it and finally access all those tweets, I had to unzip all the files into a separate folder (which I called Twitter Archives). The resulting folder is now filled with five folders and three files. A quick glance makes it clear that these are the files and folders you need for a website: CSS, images, a library and, of course, and HTML "index" file for the homepage.

It might seem complex, but it's not. The only file I need to care about is "Index." That's what I'll hit to launch the mini website and access my Twitter archive. Better yet, the whole thing is portable. I can move the zip file or Twitter Archive Folder from place to place (computer to computer) and launch it just about anywhere.

Better Than Expected

When I first heard about the Twitter archive strategy, I thought it was all offline, but that's really not the case. In fact, I feel as if Twitter just handed me 26,000 keys.

First of all the interface is, as others have reported, clean, smart and highly intuitive. At a glance, I can see just how much I tweeted in each year and month. A click on any month brings up all the tweets. They look pretty much just as they did when I originally posted them.

As you would expect, I immediately zeroed in on my very first Tweet, made on March 19, 2007:

It was awful. Embarrassing, even. I love my Twitter community and knew they'd get a kick out of seeing the first Tweet, but I wasn't sure if they could see my archive — I did download it, after all.

I clicked on the "View on Twitter" link and then shared that link with some office mates to make sure that I wasn't the only person who could view the link. As I'm sure you now know, everyone can see it.

What an awesome gift, to not only be able to see your own history, but to share with all those who helped build it.

I owe Twitter an apology. This is much better than I thought.

Time Machine

Using the Twitter archive for the first time has been a learning experience, but the real education has come from scrolling back in time through some of my earliest Tweets. The first one (see above) is a joke, but there are interesting and odd moments. Using Twitter in those early days was a little like arriving on an alien planet, and slowly but surely learning about the people, language, and most importantly, culture.

I have to admit, friends: I was a slow learner. Even months after joining Twitter, I still didn't get it:

Instead of being pleased about my tiny following, I was confused and still equated the word with negative connotations from my childhood.

Throughout 2007, I barely tweeted once a month. 2008 didn't start off much better, but in March of that year, I tweeted nine times and already was starting to mix in personal and professional observations.

So in addition to a quip about working on a school project with my daughter:

I started musing and complaining about technology:

A month later I tweeted 120 times: a more than tenfold increase. The mix was now more decidedly tech-focused, but there were still a lot of personal and random musings thrown in. The feed feels pretty experimental.

Despite this Tweet uptick, I was not yet a convert:

I had also started using Twitter conventions to increase overall engagement. In 2007, I would mention colleagues, but never used their Twitter handles. That changed in early 2008.

By the end of April I had 53 followers, Yet, there are signs I was hooked:

Over the next few months, I averaged roughly 200 Tweets. Though I continued to talk tech, I also shared little insights about myself:

And started to pay a lot more attention to my follower count (in hindsight, too much):

At the time, I was obsessed with how many followers some colleagues had and probably spent too much time actively working to increase my follower count. I soon learned, however, that you couldn't gather new followers in any other way than providing a really valuable feed:

Even though I was tweeting hundreds of times a month by late 2008, the microblogs were almost entirely texts and links, no embedded images. Thanks to Twitter Cards, it's now hard for me to imagine a Twitter stream without media content.

On the other hand, the Twitter stream is full of "Retweets" (I was learning the lingo!), tinyURLs (remember those?) references to other people on Twitter and, oh dear, "Good Morning" Tweets:

I know I did this for a while until someone, I think, finally begged me to stop. It was so parochial of me: When I was waking up, other parts of the world were well along in their day.

On a brighter note, I had already started live-tweeting events:

And including color commentary:

I recall that as this habit grew, some followers started to cry foul. For big events, like an Apple launch, I would literally flood their Twitter homepage. I had to start warning people and also get a bit more strategic about what I did and did not live tweet.

When I hit my 2,000th tweet, I started to show a little bit of my humor. The response was good, so I kept it up:

January 2009 marked one of my first Twitter movie review tweets:

These days the process is more formalized. I usually announce when I'm going to see a particular movie and then tweet a full 140 character view right after it. I also notice that these early tweets are devoid of hashtags like "#movie."

A Turning Point

By 2009, I was tweeting a few hundred times a month, but some people still weren't sure Twitter was the social media horse to bet on. My good Twitter friend Jim Connolly had a sort of Twitter crisis of the heart and jumped ship (he soon returned):

Ultimately, 2009 proved to be a watershed year for Twitter.

This was the moment, and Twitpic had changed everything.

I was home sick that day (post CES pneumonia), doing something that is now commonplace for millions of people around the word: watching TV with a second screen (a laptop) on my lap.

If you'd never heard of Twitter before, you knew about it now. The drama, the heroism, the iconic images worthy of something Life Magazine might have run in its heyday.

The Miracle on the Hudson and JKrums did put Twitter at the center of mainstream conversation. I'd been on long enough that I started to get tons of media calls asking why Twitter was such a phenomenon. I also discovered that I was more than a little hooked.

By this time, the Twitter I know and love was almost fully formed. Hashtags were prevalent, even "Follow Friday" was well underway:

2009 also saw the rise of another Twitter phenomenon: Celeb connections.

I was not immune to this phenomenon:

Twitter's nerd culture was soon sharing space with mainstream, culture and, of course, celebrity tweeters. No, not people on Twitter who achieved celebrity status, but real celebrities who were tweeting on their own. They were also reading their tweets. This was better than fan mail. Twitter was literally breaking down the barrier between celebrities and mere mortals.

With more and more people paying attention, Twitter started to change, too. I didn't always understand or approve of the changes, but I was always willing to learn more

I was tweeting and following enough people to need what was then a still very new and third-party Tweet dashboard:

The year 2009 also marked my first Oscars live tweet. I tweeted dozens of times over the course of a few hours. It's a wonder everyone didn't unfollow me.

Instead, my following grew and I found I enjoyed tweeting more and more. Plus, it seemed to be paying off:

Today my TweetGrade is 100 – not much growth in four years.

Aside from tweet-blocks about cherished cultural icons, most of my tweets have always been about the tech industry. I was watching Microsoft and, in particular, Yahoo, as it went through yet another restructuring:

I even found my first tweet to a then-upstart site:

Finally, by 2010, I started regularly using my photos in my Tweets, though this attempt leaves something to be desired. Also, I don't even remember "TweetPhoto."

Later that year I switched to Yfrog and started what would become a recurring theme for me and countless others on Twitter: Star Wars tweets:

Throughout that year, my tweet volume steadily increased, and by the following year, it wasn't unusual for me to tweet 500 times in a month (Last month I tweeted 702 times!).

I may never be able to go back through all these tweets. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't want to. Most of it is, as some have argued, too closely tied to time and place to be relevant today. Still, I do love having access.

Room for Improvement

It's not perfect. This Twitter archive is only as fresh as the day I downloaded it. I'm adding new tweets all the time. If I want a complete archive, I guess I have to download it again in the future. Also, there are numerous broken links. This isn't Twitter's fault. It's just a sad reality of the Web; some services and sites simply die.

Most of the other links in the archive tweets are not live, but still work just fine if you copy and paste into your browser. This one helped me find an old video clip and my hair:

One thing this archive lacks that I would ask Twitter to change is engagement information. I have no idea how effective or popular any of these tweets were. Surely Twitter could include Retweet and Favorite information in there.

And one other small request: I'd love to know how many followers I had at each tweet moment. That would really tell a story.

What did you find in your Twitter archives? Tell me in the comments below.

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