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Twitter has gifted its users with a holiday present–the ability to download their entire history of tweets. For now, only a small percentage of users can access the feature, but it will be rolling out to the entire Twitterverse.
The Next Web’s Martin Bryant reported, “Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has promised in recent months that an option for users to download an archive of all the tweets from their accounts would be available this year. At least for some, this long-awaited feature has arrived – and we’ve had a play with the archive browsing tool. The first report of the new option that we saw in the wild was from user @Psilosophy, who indicates where the option supposedly can be found for those who have it enabled – at the bottom of your Settings page.”
The Washington’s Post’s Hayley Tsukayama noted, “It’s a feature that Twitter users have requested for a while. Facebook already allows users to download some of the information they’ve published on the network into a single archive. Google+ also lets users download some information from its network, as does LinkedIn.”
PCMag’s David Murphy explained, “The actual archival feature works a lot like Facebook’s, in that you first have to submit a request to Twitter for your entire archive. Twitter processes all of your tweets on its side and emails you a download link when your archive is ready. Download it, and you’ll get a handy little HTML file of all of the tweets you’ve ever made, organized in an easily accessible calendar format. Pulling up your tweet-filled HTML file in your Web browser gives you a screen that looks a lot like Twitter’s normal interface – you can browse through your tweets by month or search the entire archive for specific messages, and the archive even comes with a handy little graph to show you just how busy you’ve been on Twitter each month.”
CNET’s Steven Musil added, “A Twitter representative told CNET that the company is currently testing the feature ‘with a very small percentage of users.'”
