Frequently Asked Questions

Why do the results of a search only go back a short period of time?

Tweet Archivist does not have access to the historical records of all tweets ever tweeted. Rather, Tweet Archivist uses realtime services provided by Twitter to search for tweets. Those services only allow access to roughly the last 2000 tweets of a search or 1 week of tweets, whichever comes first.

Once you begin monitoring a term with Tweet Archivist, you can be guaranteed you won't miss a tweet moving forward.

How often are archives and visualizations updated?

Archives and visualizations are updated once an hour.

How big can archives grow?

Archives can grow to 50,000 tweets. At that point, archives will roll over and begin anew.

How do I share my archives with friends and colleagues?

Go to your profile page. You can click on the lock icon and toggle the public/private setting. Once an archive is set to "Public" you can share or tweet the url of that page—just like sharing any other page. You can also embed the charts as an iframe in other webpages.

The only difference between public and private is who can see a particular archive. If you keep your archive private, only you can see your archives—and only when you're logged in. If the archive is marked public, anyone can access that archive.

Why do I have to sign in with Twitter?

In order for Tweet Archivist to regularly poll Twitter to update your archive, we need to pass a authorization information to Twitter. We never store any of your Twitter data, update your timeline or do anything invasive.

What does the status of an archive mean?

The status of an archive is either active or inactive. An active archive is an archive that we are still monitoring on Twitter. An archive is activated either because a user has signed up for a trial or else the user has purchased a subscription. An archive becomes inactive for four possible reasons:

1. A user created the archive but never activated it, which we call a snapshot archive
2. A user activated the archive as a trial, which ran for three days, but never purchased a subscription
3. A user activated the archive as a subscription and it hit 50,000 tweets and rolled over
4. A user activated the archive as a subscription and it expired

What timezone is the created date of the tweets?

When viewing the last 100 tweets from an archive on the web, the timestamp is represented in universal time. If you download the archive into Excel or another spreadsheet, you can also access the timestamp localized to the user who tweeted. You can also see the timezone of the user who tweeted.

How can I get in touch with the owners of Tweet Archivist?

Please contact info[at]tweetarchivist.com.