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May 20, 2009
Zombie Tweets Found in Search, Twitter App
Remember that Tweet you thought you deleted? It never really died. It lives on in the Twitter search - and at a Twitter app called Tweleted.
Jonathan Ross found this out the hard way when he posted his email address on Twitter. Ross has a quarter million followers and decided that perhaps posting the email address wasn't a good idea after all. But it was too late.
Apparently, it's always too late. The good news is that if you accidentally delete a tweet, Tweleted will help you find it.
I decided to test this out for myself. Sure, enough, I deleted my test tweet, searched for it and found it using both Twitter search and Tweleted:
Do you think Twitter should permanently erase deleted Tweets? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on May 20, 2009 3:35 PM
Comments
I think they should definitely delete it from public view - If they archive it for the user, fine, but we wouldn't delete them if we wanted the public seeing it!
Jason May 20, 2009 4:19 PM
*Legally* speaking, all social communities have to store their data for 7 years before purging it. In the event of a criminal investigation (e.g. sex crimes) there needs to be actionable evidence stored. Can't be a pervert, then delete your myspace profile before the cops see it now... ;-)
Twitter is similar to Facebook in using a deactivate content function when you delete it. Facebook had this problem in early days with groups. Delete a group.. it goes away.. but if you have the direct URL to said group.. you can still find it.. and by editing said group.. you can bring it back.
Twitter needs to fix this problem...
Austin May 20, 2009 5:01 PM
Twitter needs to fix something? Where have I heard that before?
Ted May 20, 2009 5:25 PM
When some messages are meant to be deleted, it should be. That's the idea of 'delete'. To have it 'accidently' erased is quite rare IMHO; even so, we could still find back the infos from various Twitter search apps, or RTs.
@wchingya
Social Media/Blogging
Ching Ya May 21, 2009 11:41 PM
Twitter sucks. Utterly. If you delete a tweet, it should go away--immediately and forever. If they want to archive them on the their servers to fulfill legal requirements or something like that, fine. But deleted tweets shouldn't be searchable or viewable by anyone except Twitter admins and law enforcement. If they can't manage that, then they should remove the trash can icon and quit pretending it's possible to delete them.
James Harricot August 2, 2009 1:00 PM
It is pretty ridiculous. I wonder if it really is a philosophical or legal issue, or if they are just so overloaded they can't be bothered to deal with it right now. Either way, I've heard a ton of people with a similar complaint. Get on it Twitter!
Matt October 5, 2009 5:29 PM
