Thursday, October 27, 2011

Twitter mystery

I wanted to check back in to our #aldspark conversation from Staff Development day to see if anything new has been posted. I can't find the conversation anywhere. I first did a search on my mobile phone ap. No tweets under this hashtag. Then I search from my computer - I knew it shouldn't make a difference, but I tried it anyway. Still no tweets. I also tried #ALDspark in case it was case sensitive. Still no luck. Any ideas about what else I might try?
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6 comments:

  1. MelissaZDOctober 27, 2011 at 3:31 PM

    Hi Donna, I just looked into this, and from what I see, it looks like Twitter searches only go back about 10 days. http://ict-connections.com/2011/10/17/how-to-archive-twitter-hashtags/

    I tried setting up a TwapperKeeper archive retroactively, but it doesn't seem to have found anything: http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/ALDspark You could check back on this later today and see if it has turned anything up, but we may have missed the window!

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  2. Lori R.October 27, 2011 at 8:54 PM

    Hi- I'm trying to search with SnapBird.org. I'll let you know if I have any luck. Lori

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  3. Mark MullisOctober 29, 2011 at 1:47 PM

    It's actually an indexing problem. Twitter is simply too large to make every tweet that's ever been sent searchable. Unfortunately it's not as simple as a 10-day rule. In fact, it's almost completely arbitrary.

    http://eventamplifier.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/a-tale-of-two-twitter-accounts/

    https://support.twitter.com/articles/66018

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  4. Mark MullisOctober 29, 2011 at 1:49 PM

    The day after Staff Day only a handful of the tweets with the #aldspark tag were showing in a search result, but when I viewed Elizabeth Bennhoff's account (@mrsbennhoff) they were all there.

    This seems to be a very unfortunate side effect of the popularity of the service.

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  5. MelissaZDOctober 31, 2011 at 4:04 PM

    Thanks, Mark! I wonder if it helps to set up an archive beforehand, or if the archive capture is subject to the same problems as the Twitter search functions. This is good to know. We've been having some trouble catching all of our Flannel Friday posts with the hashtag lately, it really isn't an isolated problem.

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  6. DonnaNovember 4, 2011 at 2:56 PM

    Thanks for all your help. Now I don't feel so stupid for not being able to find them, just not-so-smart for not knowing I would need to capture them sooner. Now if my photographic memory would just kick in, I'd find them all again.

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