In case Twitter goes out of business, you can save your old tweets

#RipTwitter is trending

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Are we witnessing the final days of Twitter? Or just massive changes?

It's safe to say Twitter is a mess right now, and nothing lasts forever. Elon Musk’s takeover has been chaotic. Maybe he can pull it together. Maybe he can’t.

Recently, Musk sent a company-wide email giving his remaining employees (half of the 7,500 employees have already been let go) a choice. They could either stay with Twitter’s new “extremely hardcore” work culture where they would need to work long and intense hours, or they could hit the road with a three-month severance package.

According to Fortune, 1,000 to 1,200 employees chose the latter.

That leaves Twitter with a much-reduced staff, fleeing advertisers, and a panicked customer base. Seriously, if you head over to Twitter right now, the atmosphere is grim.

Many people use Twitter not just for recreation, but for their business. You may not want to lose years’ worth of tweets and direct messages.

If you'd like to learn how to keep your old tweets and data, read on.

What is in your archived Twitter data?

According to Twitter, you can download an archive of your data. This data includes “the information we believe is most relevant and useful to you.”

This includes:

• Profile information
• Tweets
• Direct Messages
• Moments
• Media (images, videos, and GIFs you’ve attached to Tweets, Direct Messages, or Moments)
• A list of your followers
• A list of accounts that you are following
• Your address book
• Lists that you’ve created, are a member of or follow, interest and demographic information that we have inferred about you
• Information about ads that you’ve seen or engaged with on Twitter

How to download your archived Twitter data

Head over to Twitter on the web and click More in the navigation menu on the left. Or, in the app, click your profile circle to get to your settings.

Screenshot by author

1. From there, choose Settings and privacy.
2. Choose Your account.
3. Select Download an archive of your data.
4. You will need to confirm your password.
5. Select Request archive.

Screenshot by author

You will get an email and in-app notification when your archive is ready

I followed these steps, and Twitter told me,

“We received your request. To protect your account, it can take 24 hours or longer for your data to be ready.”

When, (and if) I receive the email, it should include a file called “Your archive” that I can access in a desktop web browser.

Is anyone left at Twitter to send us our archived data? That’s a question I can’t answer. We’ll have to wait and see if it shows up.

However, I feel as though Elon Musk likes tweeting far too much to let the company fail. I counted 13 tweets of his in the past 24 hours.

But if you have something you care to save, it never hurts to back up your data.

Check out Twitter's help page for further details.

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This article was originally published on Medium.