Methods to discover outdated tweets
If you're looking for an old tweet, there's an easier way to find it than just scrolling through your timeline. This guide shows you how.
Why is it important to find old tweets?
There are a million reasons you might want to uncover your own or others' old Tweets.
You may have tweeted a brilliant business idea last year, but you can't remember what it was. Perhaps you remember a particularly hilarious comment and want to see how many retweets it received.
It might even be so easy to see what your now most popular celebrity tweeted about before she got famous.
Finding old tweets can also save your face or save your reputation. We have all said things we are not proud of in the past. The problem is that the persistence of the internet makes comments out of hand difficult to escape. We've all seen stories of five year old tweets coming back to bite people and ruin their careers.
It is better to find these Tweets and delete them permanently, no matter how harmless they may seem.
How do I search for old tweets?
The most obvious way to look for old tweets is to scroll back through your timeline. However, depending on how much you tweet, this can take a long time. Even if you've only tweeted once a day for three years, you'll have to flip through over 1,000 tweets.
Fortunately, there are three better strategies you can use to find old tweets.
Use Twitter's advanced search
Twitter's advanced search functionality is the easiest and most complete way to search for old tweets on your own or someone else's profile. You can search using multiple filters including date, keyword, locations, and accounts. This means you can pinpoint an exact tweet or find multiple tweets that all meet the same criteria.
First, navigate to the advanced search page.
Next, choose what you want to search for. Let's say we want to see what I said about link building in 2016.
We'll start by typing "link building" into the search bar for exact phrases.
Then add my account to the Accounts section.
Then select the date range. In this case, we're looking for tweets between early and late 2016.
Voila. We get a list every time I tweeted "link building" in 2016.
You can use the advanced search filter criteria to find almost any tweet you want. You can use the date range to pinpoint exactly what someone tweeted on a particular day. You can also use it to find your first tweet.
In my case, we can see that I got on Twitter pretty early in March 2007.
Finding my first tweet is as easy as going back to advanced search and applying the following filters:
- My account (@neilpatel)
- The period (March 1, 2007 – March 31, 2007)
Twitter doesn't list the tweets in chronological order, but it's simple but easy to see what my first tweet was.
The best part about Twitter's advanced search functionality is how easy it is to change the parameters and do a new search without going back to the main search page.
In the example above, we can quickly edit the search to find out what I tweeted about in March 2020.
If your original parameters weren't narrow enough, you can easily add more to the existing search. For example, we can add "coronavirus" to the beginning of the search to only include tweets related to the pandemic.
We can also search for tweets from someone else during the same period by adding "OR from: (Twitter handle)" after my name.
Let's use this to see what my good friend Eric Siu had to say.
Ask Twitter for your records
Twitter's advanced search functionality isn't the only way you can use the platform to find your old tweets. You can also download an archive of your data to access all of your tweets at once.
Go to "Settings and Privacy".
Then click on "Your Account".
Then "Download an archive of your data."
Enter your password and click on "Request archive". You will receive a notification as soon as your ZIP file is ready to be downloaded.
Use a third party website to delete your old tweets
Several third party websites do the hard work of finding specific Tweets for you.
All of my tweets
All My Tweets is a quick, free, and easy way to see all of your Tweets on a single page. Sign in to your Twitter account and you will get a full summary of your Twitter activity.
Tweet binder
Tweet Binder allows you to get a full report on any Twitter account, not just your own. This is great if you want to find out what someone has tweeted about in the past, or want to understand how their activity on the platform has changed over time.
TweetDeleter
TweetDeleter uses your Twitter archive to make finding and deleting tweets incredibly easy. This is a great solution for people who tweet a lot and whose archive can be a little overwhelming to download.
Should I delete my old tweets?
After you find your old Tweets, you are probably wondering whether or not to delete them. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to answer this question.
There are good reasons to keep all of your old Tweets, but there are also good reasons to delete them (or at least delete the worst ones).
Let's look at both sides of the coin below to see if we can make a decision.
Benefits of Deleting Your Old Tweets
Deleting old tweets gives you a chance to start over and can help avoid unwanted and negative advertising as your audience grows. Here are some of the best reasons for deleting old Tweets:
- Want to start over on Twitter, but don't want to change your email address. In this case, it might be best to delete everything.
- You have changed your mind on a certain subject. Changing your mind is a great quality, but you may not want someone to call you a hypocrite.
- You joined Twitter when you were a teenager. We were all embarrassed when we were younger, but it's best to erase all evidence of your younger, dumber self.
- You don't want a new employer to spy on your story. Some employers check social media accounts before hiring them. Don't let them find anything they don't like.
- You have changed industries. If you used to work in ecommerce but now work for nonprofits, it may be worthwhile to delete old Tweets that have nothing to do with your current area of expertise.
If you want the advice of an expert, Katie Linendoll believes that if you have to think twice about it, simply delete a tweet. "If you hesitate about a tweet and think it might be tricky, what capacity do you think it is a good idea to keep up there?" She asks. "It's gorgeous to me, it's just not worth it."
You won't be alone even if you delete your tweets. According to TweetDeleter, activity increased 14 percent in 2020. The most common reason users deleted their Tweets was "cleaning up my feed for prospects". Other popular motifs were "get rid of awkward tweets" and "change of mind than what previous tweets represent".
Cons of deleting your old tweets
However, deleting your old tweets isn't necessarily the best idea. Deleting your Tweets has some significant drawbacks, especially if you plan to delete a large amount.
- People can notice. Bulky deleting all of your old tweets can be as bad as not deleting them for people with a large following. This can lead people to speculate about what you've said in the past, even if you haven't said anything bad at all.
- Deleted tweets are gone for good. Once you've deleted a tweet, you will no longer receive a tweet. So think carefully if you are ready to let go of him.
- Mass deleting tweets can mean losing sentimental posts. Old pictures or a message to a friend who has since passed away can have enormous sentimental value. I would advise against deleting such messages whenever possible. Even if you don't think you're going to miss the tweet now, you can change your mind in the future.
Deleting tweets can be a double-edged sword. So I believe that I am very careful about the tweets that you delete. For example, don't worry about making a typo or commenting on a belief that was held by many people at the time. If you take this approach, you may run out of time.
However, follow Katie Linendoll's advice. If you have to think twice about it, just delete it and move on. Life is too short to worry about a single tweet.
How to delete old Tweets in bulk
You don't have to delete your old tweets one by one. Multiple apps allow you to automatically delete all (or a selection) of your old Tweets.
TweetEraser
TweetEraser is a quick and easy way to filter and delete your tweets. Filter by keyword, hashtag, or date, then start deleting. There's a free version of the tool, but heavy Twitter users will likely need the premium version, which costs $ 9.99.
TweetDeleter
TweetDeleter doesn't just let you search for tweets. You can also delete them. You can use the platform to crawl your old tweets and delete them one by one, or you can set up an automatic deletion that will crawl your profile and delete tweets automatically according to the settings you have made.
With TweetDeleter you can keep your deleted tweets in your app. You may not want other users to see them anymore, but you can always read them again.
The standard version of TweetDeleter costs $ 3.99 per month.
TwitWipe
Would you like to delete your profile completely? Then go for TwitWipe, which deletes all of your tweets at once. It's super easy to use, instantly deletes your tweets, and most importantly, it's free to use.
Conclusion
Finding what you or someone else has tweeted in the past isn't always easy, especially if you're a prolific tweeter. Tweeting regularly is a great way to grow your personal brand and business, but it can also be difficult to keep track of what you are saying.
Whether you're using Twitter's advanced search functionality, requesting all of your activity from the platform, or using a third-party tool, finding old Tweets will help you determine which ones to keep and which to delete.
Whose old tweets are you going to look at first? What embarrassing things have you tweeted about in the past?
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