Is Backupmytweets.com Safe to Backup You Tweets?

Posted on July 23, 2009

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dHvoUGR3L8[/youtube]

Video of How to Backup Your Tweets using Backupmytweets.com

I got this question today via a Twitter DM on if it was safe to use this service. Although I’d seen many people using it and then tweeting out about it, I decided it was best to test drive it. I had seen @AdamJackson post months ago saying he contacted Twitter directly and they sent him a file with all his tweets but he’s a pretty prolific Tweeter (currently 46,384 tweets)

Safe?

I would say that it’s safe to use backupmytweets.com to do Tweet backups because it uses openauth instead of asking you for your password.

Worth It?

Now as to the value of the backup…that’s another matter as it only backed up 3,200 of my Tweets and the information on the home page is unclear about if you get 1GB of backup space with free accounts as well as when you pay. They’re basically saying they want to pay you $10 to tweet out about their product.

- 4 Comments - Posted in Backup your data, How To, Passwords, Twitter, Your Data, YouTube

< Liz Strauss Called Me an SOB Twitter Thoughts 2009-07-27 >

R. Campbell
You are such the resource. I just get a big smile.
thanks for checking it out.
http://info.s0l-uk.com S0l_uk
I noticed that it only backed up a few months of my tweets (I joined on September 08′) so i’ve “lost” 5 to 6 months of tweets…
Adria Richards
@s0l_uk, yeah, sorta shady
http://oib.com Joshua Baer
Hi Adria and S0l_uk,
I’m sorry that we were only able to get the most recent 3200 tweets for you. Unfortunately its not a problem with our system, but it’s a limitation of Twitter. I’m sure they keep all your old tweets, but their website and server APIs only return the most recent 3200. There is nothing we can do to get more of them for you.
This is actually a case in point of why you should back them up. If you have more than 3200 tweets right now then the old ones are lost and there is probably nothing you can do to get them back. If you start backing up now with @backupmytweets then you know that you’ll always have them saved from this day forward.
Let me know if I can answer any other questions for you – I’m @backupmytweets or @joshuabaer
Thanks for giving it a try and writing about it on your blog! I’d be happy to give you a free year of BackupMyMail if you want to give that a try too. Imagine what would happen if your email account got reset!
~Josh