20120805

Archiving twitter messages without shortened URLs with Python Twitter Tools

Version 1.9  of the Python Twitter Tools  include the new feature to follow redirects of tweeted urls. The developer behind twitter tools Mike Verdone accepted my patch.

The goal is to archive readable URLs in the tweet archive by replacing all URLs from shortening services. You can run it with twitter-archiver -f ThomasAJung to follow all links or twitter-archiver -r bit.ly,t.co,goo.gl ThomasAJung to follow the links of selected hosts.

The archived output changes from:
228771182638419968 2012-07-27 10:37:54 CEST Believe it or not there are people who see interop as a bad thing. It interferes with their business model, ... http://t.co/AhAg41x9

to:
228771182638419968 2012-07-27 10:37:54 CEST Believe it or not there are people who see interop as a bad thing. It interferes with their business model, ... http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/26/oauth1IsFine.html

You can read the Shortcomings section of the Wikipedia article about URL shortening if you are interested why you should replace the shortened URLs.