New Twitter tool to help you download your tweet history

A new Twitter tool that is under development, at the moment will make it possible for users to download a file containing their entire tweet history. While at the moment one can only possibly go back to their last few thousand posts - the new tool would mean that all the tweets one ever posted will be with them in a file to go back to, whenever one finds the need. In a meeting with The New York Times, Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, elaborated on the company's plans to introduce such a service. Costolo said, "We’re working on a tool to let users export all of their tweets. You’ll be able to download a file of them."

Get a copy of your Tweet history....soon!

Although Twitter, at the moment has no way to let users download their entire tweet history, there are a number of third-party services and developers that allow users to read through Twitter messages. The post adds, "One recently released site, called oldtweets, lets people root through some of the first messages ever sent through Twitter’s servers. (Curious about what people were tweeting about in 2006? Comically dated topics like “Returning movies to Blockbuster” and “Chatting with friends on MySpace.”)."

Facebook already allows users to download a copy of all that they have ever shared on Facebook, be it their private photos, messages and chat conversations, videos, wall posts, names of friends and the e-mail addresses belonging to some of them, et al. They also recently released an update to their Download your Information tool.

Facebook offers what it calls an expanded archive - simply meaning that users can download a copy of their expanded archives with additional details that the social network had been storing, all this while. To begin with, users need to go to their Account Settings on their Facebook profile and just there they have the option to download their archives. After a brief pause that the site takes to collect all that you’ve ever shared, you’re sent an e-mail to the address that has been listed on your account; as a security check. This is done to ensure that it is the user who has initiated the process of downloading the archive. On receiving the e-mail, the user will have to re-enter their password. If the user is accessing his account from a public computer or from one, which he doesn't use regularly, then he may have to solve a friend photo captcha or an SMS captcha via their mobile phone. 

Costolo did not state quite clearly as to when the new tool would become available for use. But the report added that he was confident that, "at some point users would be able to look through their entire history of messages posted to Twitter."