What a trip! I’ve been walking back in time through seven years of tweets and it’s quite a revelation. No wonder I didn’t believe in Twitter in 2007. I fundamentally misunderstood it, just like I didn’t quite get how Twitter chose to give access to archival Tweets. It seemed so counterintuitive.
I may have been wrong.
Gaining access to my Tweets took forever. Perhaps it’s because I’ve tweeted over 26,000 times in seven years. Combing through all that blather must take some time. In any case, a couple of days ago, a note offering me access to my Twitter archive appeared under my Twitter settings. I hit the request button and waited for an email notification. The Twitter confirmation box warned me it could take a while to compile the archives, but I got the access link in a matter of minutes.
The link led to a 30 MB zip file, which I downloaded to my local hard drive. To use it and finally access all those tweets, I had to unzip all the files into a separate folder (which I called Twitter Archives). The resulting folder is now filled with five folders and three files. A quick glance makes it clear that these are the files and folders you need for a website: CSS, images, a library and, of course, and HTML “index” file for the homepage.
It might seem complex, but it’s not. The only file I need to care about is “Index.” That’s what I’ll hit to launch the mini website and access my Twitter archive. Better yet, the whole thing is portable. I can move the zip file or Twitter Archive Folder from place to place (computer to computer) and launch it just about anywhere.
Full article HERE on Mashable