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Oldtweets – Browse your old tweets

Twitter hasn’t exactly made it easy to read your old tweets. Sure, you can just click on “more”, but it doesn’t go all the way back (only 40 pages) according to Twitter’s blog. And seriously, who has the time to click on “more” so much? There is services like TweetDumpr that dumps only 3200 tweets in .csv file.

For a blog post, I wanted to go back and to see what I tweeted about in the beginning of the year (that blog post is still coming). There is a way with Twitter URL manipulation to browse your old tweets, but this meant, you had to fiddle with the URL the whole time. I then looked on the net to see if I could find an app that I could use to my browse my twitter past… I couldn’t. So I made my own one. For a lack of a better word, it is called Oldtweets.

I first wanted to display your whole profile in an iframe and then manipulate the URL with an iframe, but Twitter is not friends with iframes. I then delved into the API and found a way around it.

Using the API, I also got the “last page” of tweets, so you can go check out your first ever tweet and all in between.

I made this quickly last night, just to get it out. I am going to hopefully make it more stylish in the future.

Enjoy browsing your old tweets!

—

P.S. I now have a looong holiday ahead of me. I have a new website launching tomorrow. Another definite I am going to try and do is add OAuth support for Tweekly.fm. More blogging too.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • strandloper

    Nice idea but not working perfectly. It says I (strandloper) have 138 pages but 128 is the last one that actually displays tweets. Pages 129 to 138 just stay blank.

  • http://www.shotbeak.com shotbeak

    Ah, I see now… It also seems to be plagued by the 3200 tweets issue. It can only go back to your 3200 tweets. As said here: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/09/time-travel-and…

    Thanks for letting me know. I'll update it quickly. I wonder if there is a work-around. Probably not.

  • http://www.shotbeak.com shotbeak

    Ah, I see now… It also seems to be plagued by the 3200 tweets issue. It can only go back to your 3200 tweets. As said here: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/09/time-travel-and…

    Thanks for letting me know. I'll update it quickly. I wonder if there is a work-around. Probably not.

  • http://www.daveduarte.co.za/ Dave

    Nice one! See a problem, solve it. I've had this problem too.

  • Dia

    oh em gee – this was SUCH a life saver!!!

  • http://twitter.com/sue1jeff Cranky Guy(s)

    hi, trying to get my old tweets but keeps giving me an error

    Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://…@netreach.net.xml) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /home/shotbeac/public_html/oldtweets/nav.php on line 4

    Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity “http://www.twitter.com/users/jeffb@netreach.net.xml” in /home/shotbeac/public_html/oldtweets/nav.php on line 4
    Twitter Archives! Browse your old tweets (up to 3200 tweets). Developed by Simon de la Rouviere

    Enter a page (max 0).

  • http://hhtp://philgo20.com philgo20

    Thanks for that ! Same me the same coding ;-)

    You should open source it …

  • http://www.shotbeak.com shotbeak

    It is pretty much ducktaped together, not using official API to do it and so forth. But I'll see. Maybe, I'll open source it. :)

  • http://hhtp://philgo20.com philgo20

    if you are not using the api, might not be worth it. thanks for the tool anyway ;-)

  • http://brainstormes.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/tweets-a-journey-through-the-past/ Tweets: a journey through the past « On blogging well

    [...] As it turns out, there’s an easy way to look at your old tweets without having to wade through other people’s. It’s called OldTweets, and all you have to do is enter your Twitter user name. Read about how here. [...]

  • http://twitter.com/ChrisGriswold Chris Griswold

    This is amazing, but is there any way you can extend the number of pages it can go back? I just used the site and it only goes back as far as I could go clicking “MORE” on my Twitter profile did until it wouldn't let me anymore.

  • http://www.shotbeak.com shotbeak

    For performance issues Twitter doesn't allow you to fetch beyond 3200
    tweets. I just provide a simpler interface instead of click “more” the whole
    time.

  • Natsu

    It's broken.

    Warning: simplexml_load_string() [function.simplexml-load-string]: Entity: line 61: parser error : Entity 'rsaquo' not defined in /home/tweeklyf/public_html/www.twimemachine.com/index.php on line 293

    Warning: simplexml_load_string() [function.simplexml-load-string]: <li class=”first”>Home ›</li> in /home/tweeklyf/public_html/www.twimemachine.com/index.php on line 293

    Warning: simplexml_load_string() [function.simplexml-load-string]: ^ in /home/tweeklyf/public_html/www.twimemachine.com/index.php on line 293

    Warning: simplexml_load_string() [function.simplexml-load-string]: Entity: line 82: parser error : Entity 'copy' not defined in /home/tweeklyf/public_html/www.twimemachine.com/index.php on line 293

    Warning: simplexml_load_string() [function.simplexml-load-string]: <li class=”first”>© 2010 Twitter</li> in /home/tweeklyf/public_html/www.twimemachine.com/index.php on line 293

    Warning: simplexml_load_string() [function.simplexml-load-string]: ^ in /home/tweeklyf/public_html/www.twimemachine.com/index.php on line 293

  • http://www.shotbeak.com shotbeak

    That happens occasionally. I still don't know why. I've tried replicating it, but it doesn't happen.

    It is usually fixed by logging out at the bottom or cleaning out your cache.

  • rhyswilliams

    this is great – thank you very much! Could it be easily extended to search by hashtag within your user account , so you could see all your tweets for a topic? if so that would be awesome!

  • pissed off

    it doesnt work. keeps showing me 0 pages when i have more than 3000 tweets.zzz.

  • Catacataca

    This is neat-o! I found the old tweets that I was looking for. Got so excited my reaction was mostly,” I STRUCK GOLD!!!” Thank you so much! :)

  • fodoj

    Hi! I've wrote (actually, its done nearly on 75%) crazy twitter app, which all based on tweets. But twitter returns results only for 5 days, so my app will be useless after this period of time. Is there any API for your TwimeMachine, to get many tweets in .json?

  • http://www.shotbeak.com shotbeak

    I use twitter's API. Twitter's tweets are capped at 3200 tweets though.

  • _psychosocial9

    I don’t get this page number stuff. I’m typing in a random page number for my tweets, click go and nothing at all happens.
    bit more detail please?

  • http://www.shotbeak.com shotbeak

    The page numbers is how far back it goes by 25 tweets per page. In other
    words, if you have 3200 tweets (Twitter’s limit), you can go back 128 pages.
    There are however some issues with Twitter with some users, where they
    display a certain tweet count, but in fact have a different amount of
    tweets. In that case, it will display empty pages.

  • cheryl806

    It only shows the first page of my tweets. I have 128 pages. When I go to 2nd page, blank. HELP!

  • Howwwww

    How can I find Tweets by other users? I’m trying to find this person’s tweet but they tweet A LOT and Firefox is shit so it keeps freezing on me, and now after going back about 3 months of their tweets the page won’t load anymore.

  • http://twitter.com/shotbeak Simon de la Rouviere

    Hello. You can browse through the tweets of other users. It is in the navigation below the buttons. If you want to find a specific tweet that you sort of know that content of, try http://snapbird.org/instead. If the person tweets a lot, it might be possible that the tweet you are looking isn’t going to be returned by Twitter. They only provide that latest 3200 tweets unfortunately. Also: Use Google Chrome, it is a much better browser. ;)