A while ago, I wrote about backing up your data that is stored on the web. Then, a few days ago I came across a blog post on Beacon Hill NW that was talking about Twitter and the fail whale. As sometimes happens, Jim was having trouble with Twitter. A good discussion arose asking the question: “what do you do if Twitter fails for good?”
Be Ready For That Day
While I do not believe Twitter will be shutting down any time soon, I do believe it is good to be prepared for the future. A case in point: AOL has recently been shutting down a couple of its services. About five years ago, who would have thought AOL would be struggling like it currently is? So, here are a few suggestions on how you can back up your Twitter data.
Tweetake
Tweetake is simple.
- Enter your Twitter name and password.
- Choose what you want to back up. Your six options are followers, friends, favorites, your tweets, direct messages, everything.
- Click “get ‘em.”
- Wait about 20 to 30 seconds (or more for you power-Twitter users)
- Download the supplied CSV file.
That’s it. You now have backed up your Twitter account.
I am a bit leery of giving my login information to anyone. So, whenever I use this service I temporarily change my password, use Tweetake, and then change my password back. You can never be too safe and this way I know my information stays with me.
Thanks to The World Wide Web Blog for recommending the Tweetake tool. It was one of the sites that helped convince me that Tweetake is a reputable service and worthy of consideration.
The Manual Method
If you are not trusting or daring enough to give out your user name and password, then here is a manual method for backing up your followers and friends. Thanks to Tweetcrunch for teaching me this technique.
- Put http://twitter.com/statuses/followers.xml in your address bar of your browser
- Save this page in your browser and read it as an XML file, with for example excel. If you have a lot of followers then use http://twitter.com/statuses/followers.xml?page=2 and so on.
- For your friends use the same process with this link http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.xml
Reference to backing up your Twitter information.
Hopefully, these methods will give you a good idea of how to back up your Twitter data and prevent the cloud from keeping it.
puhahaha!
what do you do with that backup?
There are a couple of things.
1. Save it as a back up. If Twitter ever does go down or loses all of their information you can easily recover all of the people you follow.
2. If you get a new Twitter name you will have the list of followers to easily transfer to the new Twitter name.
3. Twitter has had a history of losing some of people's followers. If someone you are following gets dropped, but you do not know who it is you can quickly analyze the missing people.
These are a few options. I hope that helps.
I thought you might like the article since it is pretty relevant to our discussion on your blog.
Thanks for that info Leo! I did not even think about backing up my info from tweeter… do you know if there is any way to back up facebook?
John Paul – Yeah, I think it is something that is often overlooked. I am glad you found the information useful and I hope that you have now backed up your Twitter information.
I am not sure about Facebook, but plan on doing some research to see if I can find something to help me back up my data there.
Thanks for the comment!
I too am thankful for the backup advice. It never entered my stream of thought to back up Twitter – I also like the password change idea. I never give my passwords away. Changing them and then back again is definitely worth the effort!
Yeah, I completely agree. A few seconds of time spent changing the password pays off knowing our information is secure. To my knowledge, Twitter is now offering an API key (or something like it) so you do not have to give out your password. Hopefully, programs like TweetDeck, Tweetake, or Twhirl will begin using those so I can even further keep my passwords safe while still using their services.
I am glad you found the backup advice useful. Seeing so many things go wrong in the cloud recently has really made me aware of how vulnerable we are to someone's small mistake. One minor accident and we may lose a lot of valuable info (like my entire blog… yikes!!).
Have a great evening and thanks for the comment, David!
Happy Easter!
Happy Easter to you as well! I pray that you will have a great time of worship and celebration of Jesus' resurrection!
Thank You for this great information and have a very Happy Easter.
I am glad you liked the information. I hope you also have a great Easter.
Thanks for stopping by.
This is great – I'll share it
Awesome! I am glad you liked it.
Awesome! I am glad you liked it.
Nice blog! I found it while searching for twitter-bird images for my own blog. It's an Interesting read, and nicely laid out. I hope you'll post some new entries, and I'll add you to my reader feed with that in mind.
All the best,
Ann H. Shea
Thanks, Ann. We are actually in the process of reconfiguring our blog and the content we provide. Hopefully, we should be back blogging again over the course of a couple of months. Thanks for the comment!