Twitter CEO Promises Tweet Archive By End Of 2012
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has promised that a system will be in place by the end of 2012 which allows users to download and save their tweets.
Over the last year, Twitter users have been clamouring for a service that allows them to download their favourite tweets. Having already affirmed back in September that Twitter will be introducing the feature, Costolo reiterated his promise at a recent talk sponsored by the Ford School of Public Policy and School of Information.
The publicised deadline has angered his engineers, however, who think that the creation of an archive system in such a short space of time is unrealistic. Costolo admitted at the recent talk that “the engineers who are actually doing the work don’t necessarily agree that they’ll be done by the end of the year”, and are “mad” with him for setting such a firm deadline.
The engineers’ discontent is understandable. Currently, 1 billion tweets are sent every 2.5 days. At certain times during the presidential election, over 15,000 tweets were being sent every second. Twitter now has 500 million users sending in excess of 350 million tweets a day.
Twitter is engineered for instantaneous search and distribution. If users had the ability to archive the thousands of tweets sent every minute, then Twitter’s real-time messaging service would slow down significantly, or even crash completely.
To enable users to archive their tweets, Twitter’s engineering department are having to build an entirely new system from scratch. Considering the fact that a Twitter archive could grow by almost 3 billion messages a week, designing it is no easy task.
Despite the enormity of the task, however, Costolo seems confident that the Twitter engineers can pull it off.
Costolo made some other interesting revelations during the talk:
Would you like to archive your tweets? Do you expect the service to arrive by January?
Contact us on Twitter or leave your comments below.
Will Sigsworth
Follow us @SocialMediaF & @WillAtSMF
www.socialmediafrontiers.com
Over the last year, Twitter users have been clamouring for a service that allows them to download their favourite tweets. Having already affirmed back in September that Twitter will be introducing the feature, Costolo reiterated his promise at a recent talk sponsored by the Ford School of Public Policy and School of Information.
The publicised deadline has angered his engineers, however, who think that the creation of an archive system in such a short space of time is unrealistic. Costolo admitted at the recent talk that “the engineers who are actually doing the work don’t necessarily agree that they’ll be done by the end of the year”, and are “mad” with him for setting such a firm deadline.
The engineers’ discontent is understandable. Currently, 1 billion tweets are sent every 2.5 days. At certain times during the presidential election, over 15,000 tweets were being sent every second. Twitter now has 500 million users sending in excess of 350 million tweets a day.
Twitter is engineered for instantaneous search and distribution. If users had the ability to archive the thousands of tweets sent every minute, then Twitter’s real-time messaging service would slow down significantly, or even crash completely.
To enable users to archive their tweets, Twitter’s engineering department are having to build an entirely new system from scratch. Considering the fact that a Twitter archive could grow by almost 3 billion messages a week, designing it is no easy task.
Despite the enormity of the task, however, Costolo seems confident that the Twitter engineers can pull it off.
Costolo made some other interesting revelations during the talk:
- Twitter are considering a move into China, depending on the views of the new Chinese government.
- Twitter is coordinating with the Japanese government on a '”lifeline project”, to provide lists of welfare and relief agencies after disasters.
- Every government request for the censorship of tweets is sent to http://www.chillingeffects.org/
- Twitter will increase its publication of the data gathered by its analytics team.
Would you like to archive your tweets? Do you expect the service to arrive by January?
Contact us on Twitter or leave your comments below.
Will Sigsworth
Follow us @SocialMediaF & @WillAtSMF
www.socialmediafrontiers.com
Twitter CEO Promises Tweet Archive By End Of 2012
Reviewed by Unknown
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
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Reviewed by Unknown
on
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
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Unknown
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