My #FirstTweet and why you shouldn’t delete your tweets

I was excited to find out that for Twitter’s 8th birthday, it was letting users find & share their very #FirstTweet!

But I’ve had issues with this kind of thing before.

In January 2013, Twitter rolled out its Twitter Archive function, where you could download all of your tweets including retweets “going back to the beginning.” Twitter says my first tweet was in 2008. I knew this was inaccurate. I knew so passionately that I wrote a blog post about how my Twitter Archive was incomplete.

In that post, I make a strong case for why the tweet Twitter claimed was my first, and still today, with its new #FirstTweet function, claims is my first, is wrong.

Linda’s Untrue First Tweet.

I joined Twitter on June 30, 2007. My first tweet was not over a year later in August 2008.

The date Linda joined Twitter.

I have been struggling with this missing Twitter history for quite some time. (Not really ‘struggling’ though, but whenever these things come up, I had always wondered why).

This morning I finally came to the realization of why my Twitter history is incomplete, and why my #FirstTweet is inaccurate, during a conversation with @britl.

My moment of realization with @britl. (Click to enlarge)

Here is the transcript for easier reading:

Linda: Lol I don’t remember my first tweet but I vividly remember my reason for signing up to Twitter and it was to tweet So You Think You Can Dance dancers specifically Jamie Goodwin who at the time was experimenting with that Twitter thing lol and that was summer 2007.

I could go back to my old SYTYCD forum days and find the threads where everyone is excitedly talking about going on Twitter to tweet Jamie lol. SO TWITTER IS WRONG. LOL

It’s saying my first tweet was in August 2008 after Mark Kanemura was on (Season 4) and I absolutely was tweeting well before my Mark days. Lol

Brittney: Lol. I forgot what a SYTYCD geek you were. By the way, Travis was my fave. ;)

Huh that’s odd, since Mack’s tweet was 2006. So it’s not necessarily an issue with the date. So why is it wrong?

Linda: Lol Travis was my fav before Mark. Lol I had a fan site for him well before Mark’s season too.

(MOMENT OF REALIZAITON): And now i’m putting it together omg I think I went back and deleted a ton of my old tweets because I was embarassingly fan girly lol. But to do a whole year seems extreme.

Brittney: True facts. That performance on the bench with the flower ruined future SYTYCD’s.

Does it Linda? Does it really? (seem too extreme)

Linda: LOL

Brittney: Or are you just that extreme?

Linda: LOL. MY HISTORY (crying smiley face. crying smiley face. crying smiley face. crying smiley face. crying smiley face). and yes that routine was amazing. So was his hair.

I may publish this conversation online to explain my false first tweet. lol.

Brittney: Haha. Oh crap. I admitted to watching SYTYCD.

Linda: I think I’ll title this ‘Why you shouldn’t delete tweets.’

So there you have it.

Past Linda, who didn’t want the world to see how much of a fangirl she was on Twitter, deleted a year’s worth of tweets and ruined her Twitter history for Future Linda. I will never know what my real first tweet was. I assume it had to be something like OMG JAMIE, GOOD LUCK. TWEET ME BACK. But I can’t be sure.

The moral of this story is: don’t delete your tweets.

Other lessons learned:

• Brittney watched SYTYCD.
• I use “lol” WAY too much in text-based conversations.

At least I can now rest easy knowing WHY my Twitter Archive is incomplete.

It’s not Twitter’s fault as I had originally accused.

I love you Twitter.

Linda

Follow @lindork