Twitshift

February 4, 2011 10:22 AM

Twitshift is a service that lets you follow yourself on Twitter...a year ago. "We’ll store your old posts on our server and repost them to a second account of your choosing on the same day you posted them last year."
posted by cashman (22 comments total)

Love the Primer tag.
posted by pwally at 10:27 AM on February 4, 2011 [4 favorites]

twitrip: if my first post goes to my second account on the first year then I shall direct my second account to repost to a third account on the second year which will beget a fourth account to repost my post from my first year on my second account which reappeared on my third account to the be reposted to my fourth account..and so on.
posted by Debaser626 at 10:35 AM on February 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

And the internet has just fallen into it's own navel. Good job team, I'm really proud of us.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 10:42 AM on February 4, 2011 [8 favorites]

One of the factors of twitter that totally pisses me off to no end is that a user can only access their last 10,000 or so tweets. Try to go back in your timeline to the beginning. I forget what the limitation is, but you can't go back much further than that.

So as a micro-blogging platform is sucks.

I also hated when they took away being able to see the @replies of the people I am following. The later introduced search functions and lists don't cut it. It's really hard to find new people to follow if you're not into cookie cutter following.

As a social media it sucks.

The "new twitter" interface is god-aweful and annoying as all get out. You can only see like 5 tweets at a time. You can't open multiple users in multiple tabs.

As a website it sucks.

This said I am a big fan. Off to make my new account now! It'll be my 7th or 8th.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:49 AM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Let's see if Sarah Palin tweets about the 100K she's taking today to speak at the first Tea Party Convention. Surely, this!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 10:57 AM on February 4, 2011

One of the factors of twitter that totally pisses me off to no end is that a user can only access their last 10,000 or so tweets. Try to go back in your timeline to the beginning. I forget what the limitation is, but you can't go back much further than that.

I hate this. Anyone know a good archive solution?
posted by grobstein at 11:03 AM on February 4, 2011

All the archive solutions presume that you set them up from the beginning. There is no way to get all of your old tweets.

I love how twitter celebrated the fact that they were giving all of the catalog of tweet to the Library of Congress. Big deal. The people that wrote them can't have them though, huh? That's plain stupid.

I wrote the Library of Congress and asked them to print out my first 10,000 tweets. They ignored me.
posted by cjorgensen at 11:08 AM on February 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

Twitshift is free, but for Metafilter this would be a revenue opportunity. For another $5, you get a second account that reposts all your stuff from a year ago.
posted by beagle at 11:10 AM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'd pay another $5 to delete everything one year after I write it.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:14 AM on February 4, 2011 [6 favorites]

See, this twitshift is sort of a failure for me.

Perhaps I tweet too often, but it's saying my next twitshift tweet will be:

1 year ago Next tweet in 7 months, 5 hours

I'm guessing this is due to the above limitation. It can't go back far enough to get a years worth? So twitter doesn't even let you access your own material that is less than a year old. Lame.

When I figured this out I stopped using twitter as any kind of record of my life achievements. It's all dick jokes and what I had for lunch now!
posted by cjorgensen at 11:16 AM on February 4, 2011

It's twurtles all the way down.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:18 AM on February 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm guessing this is due to the above limitation. It can't go back far enough to get a years worth? So twitter doesn't even let you access your own material that is less than a year old. Lame.

They say the API call they're using is limited to 3,200 most recent tweets.
posted by grobstein at 11:44 AM on February 4, 2011

I also hated when they took away being able to see the @replies of the people I am following. The later introduced search functions and lists don't cut it. It's really hard to find new people to follow if you're not into cookie cutter following.

Are you serious? If there's one thing I hated about Twitter-of-yore, it was seeing half of a conversation I didn't give a shit about. Not displaying @replies to people who you weren't also following was one of the best decisions they ever made.
posted by pts at 11:50 AM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

For a nice archive of your own tweets check out Tweet Nest. You have to host it yourself but it shouldn't be too hard to set up. I'm running an instance of it and I use it surprisingly often to search my own tweets.
posted by sveskemus at 11:52 AM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

There's also an ipad app called Tweet Library.
posted by stratastar at 11:57 AM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Are you serious? If there's one thing I hated about Twitter-of-yore, it was seeing half of a conversation I didn't give a shit about. Not displaying @replies to people who you weren't also following was one of the best decisions they ever made.

Yeah, I'm serious. It was a toggleable option. For those who hated it, fine. Mark the little box. For those of us that liked it taking it away really sucked.

I found it like sitting on a coffeeshop and watching chatter go by. I'd dip into the conversations I liked and if the people were interesting enough I followed them. Now it's a big echo chamber where the only people I talk to are the ones I am following. They took the blogging out of micro-blogging, so it didn't surprise me when they took the social out of social media. Following people that interacted with the people I followed was the only way I found new people to follow.

Now I don't much give a rat's ass. I throw stuff out there, knowing eventually no one will be able to access it other than directly, and I seldom follow anyone new. I for sure seldom follow anyone first.

Twitter's "who to follow" really sucks. It suggest people I've blocked, gives celebrities over and over again, won't listen when I say not interested, ect. They have introduced a few things I like. I love being able to tag an account as spam and block it at the same time (twitblock lists my blocks as above 7,000).

I'm old. I have a lawn.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:40 PM on February 4, 2011

As a sightreader, I first saw this as TwitShit. Which, come to think of it, might be a fair assessment of my first year of tweets.
posted by .kobayashi. at 12:44 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm serious. It was a toggleable option.

You know, I didn't realize until today that they'd taken away the option. I thought they'd just changed the default setting.

I now find myself in total agreement with you. I don't use twitter that way, but you should be able to if you wanted to. And yeah, their "who to follow" thing is worse than useless.
posted by pts at 12:49 PM on February 4, 2011

Tweet August 3, 2010: "Ate Doritos. Man I'm regretting this. Better get Beano"

Yep. Totally want that repeated on Aug 3, 2011
posted by stormpooper at 1:14 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

See, this twitshift is sort of a failure for me.

Perhaps I tweet too often, but it's saying my next twitshift tweet will be:

1 year ago Next tweet in 7 months, 5 hours

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Tweet
posted by adamdschneider at 3:03 PM on February 4, 2011

My only hope for this is that it leads to moments that resemble The Mayo Story.
posted by milkrate at 3:10 PM on February 4, 2011

Screw last year's.
Been there, done that.
Show me next year's.
posted by fredludd at 6:52 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]