Do you ever revisit your previous tweets? Twitter has been round since 2006 — if you happen to had been an early adopter, you’d most likely be stunned to see a few of the content material you as soon as thought was cool and acceptable to share.
Reviewing your previous tweets will enable you to hold your model picture in verify, and it ought to be a part of your common social media audits.
On this submit, we go over find out how to seek for previous tweets and delete them.
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Why is preserving monitor of previous tweets essential?
If, like me, you joined Twitter in its very early years with no thought what it was actually about, you could be questioning find out how to discover previous tweets. What did you must say within the halcyon days of 2007? Are irrelevant or probably embarrassing tweets lingering in your timeline?
Having fun with the free wi-fi at YVR.
— Christina Newberry (@ckjnewberry) March 5, 2009
Singing the praises of free wifi at a serious worldwide airport (nevermind calling it “wi-fi”) seems to be somewhat goofy from the absolutely linked days of 2022.
In fact, this random tweet isn’t going to get me in any hassle. But when my timeline had been suffering from this sort of factor, I’d most likely need to go in and clear it up. It may additionally be a good suggestion to skinny out a few of my overzealous grammar assaults and intensive retweeting from the early 2010s.
We’re not advocates of cancel tradition, or of hiding out of your previous. However, realistically, there are many causes you’d need to delete previous content material out of your Twitter timeline.
Perhaps you began with a private Twitter account and now need to use it for enterprise functions. Perhaps you’re job looking and know potential employers will likely be checking you out on social. Or perhaps you stated some issues if you had been younger that you’ve got grown as much as perceive weren’t so sensible.
Preserve studying to learn the way to seek for previous tweets and delete them. Needless to say all of those strategies delete your tweets from Twitter itself and from retweets and quote tweets created with the fashionable Twitter choices. If somebody copy and pasted a part of your tweet (like we did for old fashioned RTs and MTs) or screencapped it, the content material is there to remain.
Find out how to discover previous tweets: 4 strategies
Technique 1: Twitter superior search
Twitter’s superior search function is the simplest solution to search previous tweets and doesn’t require you to provide any third-party apps entry to your account.
1. Log in to your Twitter account and go to Twitter’s superior search web page.
2. Underneath the Accounts subheading, enter your username into the From these accounts discipline.
3. Enter no matter data you possibly can keep in mind concerning the tweet(s) you’re searching for. This might be a key phrase or phrase, a hashtag, an account you replied to or talked about, and/or a selected date vary.
The date choice choices return to 2006, when Twitter first launched.
4. Click on Search. Within the search outcomes, you’ll see an inventory of prime tweets from that interval.
5. To see each tweet from that interval, click on on the Newest tab. This could return an inventory of each tweet you despatched between the from and till dates you specified, in reverse chronological order.
You can too use the tabs throughout the highest of the display to search for tweets that comprise pictures or movies.
Technique 2: Obtain a whole archive of your tweets
Downloading an archive of your tweets infrequently is sweet social media observe basically. It’s additionally a good way to go looking your whole report of previous tweets. Right here’s find out how to see previous tweets utilizing the Twitter archive:
1. Go to https://twitter.com/settings/account
2. Underneath Your Account click on on Obtain an archive of your knowledge. When prompted, re-enter your password and select a verification technique.
3. Underneath Twitter knowledge, click on Request archive.
3. It could possibly take a few days for Twitter to arrange your archive. When it’s prepared, you’ll get a push notification and an electronic mail to let you understand.
4. Click on on the notification to obtain your archive. Or, go to again to https://twitter.com/settings/account and click on on Obtain an archive of your knowledge beneath Your Account.
5. Click on Obtain archive to get a .zip file of all of your Twitter exercise, together with all of your previous tweets.
6. After getting the .zip file in your desktop, open the file referred to as Your archive.html. You’ll see a abstract of all of your exercise on Twitter. To see all of your previous tweets, click on Tweets.
You’ll see an inventory of all of your previous tweets, in reverse chronological order. You should utilize the search field and filters on the appropriate of the web page to slender your search, or use the tabs throughout the highest to particularly see your replies and retweets.
Every tweet in your downloaded archive features a hyperlink to the reside tweet on Twitter for simple entry.
Technique 3: Use an app to see your previous tweets on one scrollable web page
For those who don’t need to wait to obtain your whole Twitter archive, right here’s find out how to lookup previous tweets utilizing a third-party service. Choices like AllMyTweets will let you see your 3200(-ish) newest tweets virtually instantaneously in simply scrollable kind.
The 3200 tweets restrict is imposed by Twitter’s API. For those who tweet as soon as a day, that 3200-tweet view will take you again almost 9 years. However if you happen to’re like Hootsuite and take part in a variety of Twitter chats, it’ll most likely take you again lower than two years.
Nonetheless, it’s an excellent place to begin your seek for previous tweets.
1. Go to AllMyTweets and log in utilizing your Twitter account. You’ll need to grant AllMyTweets entry to your Twitter account, however you possibly can all the time revoke this entry later.
2. When you’re logged in , you possibly can lookup your individual previous tweets or another person’s. Enter the username you’d prefer to lookup previous tweets for.
4. Scroll via the tweets, which seem in reverse-chronological order. Or use the search choice in your browser to search for a selected key phrase, phrase, and even emoji.
Technique 4: Use the Wayback Machine
What if the tweet you’re searching for has been deleted, and also you don’t have entry to the Twitter archive for the account it was despatched from?
You may need some luck looking for it utilizing the Wayback Machine. It doesn’t archive particular person tweets, but it surely does have screenshots of widespread Twitter pages from particular dates.
Observe: This simply goes to indicate you that deleting tweets is rarely a foolproof solution to purge them from the web.
Right here’s find out how to seek for previous tweets utilizing the Wayback Machine:
1. Go to the Wayback Machine. Within the search bar on the prime, enter http://twitter.com/[username], changing [username] with the account you need to search.
2. Click on Browse Historical past. The Wayback Machine will current you with each screenshot it has of that consumer’s Twitter web page, organized by yr and day.
3. Choose which yr you’d prefer to see tweets from within the timeline on the prime of the display. Then click on on a date bubble.
4. The Wayback Machine will present you a screenshot of the consumer’s Twitter web page precisely because it appeared on that day. Most aged screenshots of Twitter will comprise the primary 20 or so tweets that appeared on the web page that day, however gained’t allow you to scroll to see older tweets. For instance, right here’s how Hootsuite’s Twitter web page appeared on August 24, 2014:
Find out how to delete previous tweets
Keep in mind, as we simply illustrated with the Wayback Machine, it’s type of not possible to delete one thing as soon as it hits the web. That stated, you possibly can delete your Twitter content material from Twitter, which actually makes them a lot tougher for somebody to search out with out actually digging.
Technique 1: Delete previous tweets manually
If you wish to delete previous tweets straight on Twitter, you’ll have to take action one by one. There’s no native choice to delete a number of tweets. Right here’s the way it works.
- In your profile web page, or utilizing your Twitter archive, find the tweet you need to delete.
- Click on the three dots (extra) icon on the prime proper of the tweet.
- Click on Delete.
And right here’s find out how to delete one thing you Retweeted:
- In your profile web page, scroll to the merchandise you Retweeted.
- Hover your cursor over the Retweet icon.
- Click on Undo Retweet.
Technique 2: Mass delete previous tweets
As a substitute of looking for particular objects in your timeline, it’d typically be simpler to mass delete tweets.
Like we stated above, there’s no native choice to do that inside Twitter, however there are apps that can will let you delete previous tweets in bulk.
Among the greatest choices embrace:
- TweetDelete, which lets you mass delete tweets based mostly on how previous they’re or based mostly on particular key phrases or phrases.
- TweetDeleter, which lets you delete previous tweets based mostly on key phrases, date, sort, and media. A bonus of TweetDeleter is that it retains your previous tweets in a personal archive, so that they’re faraway from Twitter however nonetheless obtainable to you.
- Semiphemeral lets you mass delete previous tweets whereas preserving people who have a selected degree of engagement. You can too choose particular person tweets to avoid wasting from deletion.
Utilizing any third-party app requires you to grant the app entry to your Twitter account. It’s a good suggestion to revoke that entry when you’ve finished every part that you must do.
Technique 3: Delete previous tweets mechanically
Perhaps you like to retweet issues however don’t need these tweets to reside in your timeline without end. Or perhaps you solely need to hold tweets in your timeline that hit a sure degree of engagement.
On this case, an automated delete service is an efficient choice. The entire mass deletion instruments above additionally will let you set ongoing duties that can delete tweets mechanically over time.
For instance, right here’s how the continued Twitter deletion duties setup seems to be in Semiphemeral.
Supply: micahflee.com
Technique 4: The (virtually) nuclear choice
WARNING: This technique lets you hold your username, however you’ll lose all of your followers. That is actually an account reset. Use this technique solely as a final resort.
For those who actually need a contemporary begin on Twitter, you possibly can fully wipe your account and begin over. To take action, you’ll have to create a brand new account with a short lived username, delete your previous account, after which do a username switcheroo.
This technique just isn’t for the faint of coronary heart! However if you happen to actually need to scrap every part, right here’s the way it works.
- Create a brand new Twitter account with a brand new (non permanent) username.
- Delete your present Twitter account. (Yikes! Actually. We imply it once we say this technique is not any joke.) As soon as the account is deleted your username turns into obtainable, so do that subsequent half quick.
- Change the title of your new account with the non permanent username to your earlier username:
- From the profile web page, click on the three dots (extra) icon.
- Click on Settings and privateness.
- Click on Your account.
- Click on Account data and ensure your password,
- Click on Username, then enter your authentic username.
That’s it. You now have a brand-new Twitter account with 0 tweets – and 0 followers! – however the slate is wiped completely clear.
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