Twitter opens up tweet archive downloads

Twitter now allows users to download past tweets for archiving.

The new service will allow users to download past tweets going all the way back to when they first used the social network. Twitter says the option to download past tweets is currently only available to a small group of users. However, the social media giant expects to roll out the feature to all its users in the coming months.

"This project was first built during one of our quarterly Hack Weeks. Since then, we've done the engineering work necessary to make it available to Twitter users," wrote Mollie Vandor of Twitter's user services engineering team in a blog post.

"We look forward to seeing the old Tweets you uncover. As you go through all of your Tweets, share your favorites using #TwitterArchive."

The announcement comes following promises of such a service from Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo earlier this year. Costolo made the announcement during a speech at the University of Michigan last month.

Twitter users will be able to view their past tweets by the month they were created. They will also be able to search through their archive by key words, phrases, hashtags, and other user's names.

The service is currently available to a select number of users through a prompt in the settings menu. Users who request the service will receive their tweet archive through email.

News of the archiving option comes following the announcement that Twitter had broken the 200 million active user threshold earlier this year.