As we kick off a new year, many of us take time to reflect on the previous one. But what if you want to look back more than one year?
A time machine that only goes back one year probably won’t do you much good. That’s why Timehop, a “social catchup service,” is now making it possible to pull in more past tweets than Twitter’s API restrictions currently allow.
The magic number is 3,200. That’s the number of recent tweets that can normally be pulled from your Twitter history. But Timehop has created a workaround.
By visiting the settings page of your Twitter account, users like you and me can request a download of your Twitter archive. That file containing all of your tweets (even the very first one) can then be uploaded to a new Timehop tool which will compile a complete timeline of tweets.
If you’re rushing to check out this awesome feature and bathe in the nostalgia, you might be a little disappointed. The ability to download your archive is new as of this month, and Twitter is slowly rolling out the feature to all of its users. That means you might not have the ability to download your archive yet, but Twitter promises that the feature will eventually be available to all users.
In the meantime, Timehop offers an iPhone app as well as a daily email subscription option to look back at tweets from a year ago to the day. You can even see your Facebook status updates, and Foursquare checkins. It’s your chance to see where you were and what you tweeted 365 days ago.
I personally find the service fun and interesting when I happen to open the “Timehop Abe” email in the morning. Most of the time, though, I find myself deleting the daily email as it gets buried in my inbox.
What do you think of Timehop and the new ability to upload your full Twitter history? Is it something you will use? Leave your comments below, or tweet at me at @JaredMandel.
