Checking out my Twitter past with the Twitter archive

I joined twitter in March of 2007, and my first tweet was not Shakespeare by any means.

To find this piece of internet history, I had to download my archive of tweets from Twitter. This doesn’t sound like it would be to tough of a job, but of course there is a gotcha.

After logging in to Twitter, go to your settings page. Once there, DO NOT go to the obvious Your Twitter Data, scroll to the bottom and select Download Data.

No, DO NOT USE THIS! It is a cruel joke played on you by Twitter.

One would think this is where you get your archive, but one would be WRONG! That link will only get you data that Twitter thinks you’ll find useful, and the data is in a bunch of files in JSON format. Don’t go there, just don’t.

Instead, select Account on the left and scroll down to Request your Twitter Archive

This .zip file, once it is ready, will contain your entire history. Download and unzip the file. Open up the newly created folder and double-click on the index.html file. This will open the file up in your default browser, giving you an interface into a world that you might have forgotten exists.

I have no idea what I was doing with Tweets like this in 2007: