[Air-L] Academic replacements for TwapperKeeper.com?

[Matt Munley]

Cornelius,
How well would something like 140kit (http://140kit.com/) meet your needs?
Here's their description from their site:

"We use our cluster of machines to collect your data using our access to the
Twitter API. If you search for tweets with a term, we employ the streaming
API to collect data in a distributed fashion. When your data collection is
finished, depending on your access level, we conduct an array of analytics
on the data set, ranging from the ordinary dump of data in MySQL/CSV to
Network graph visualizations, gender breakdowns, and more."

It seems to hit most of your bullet points; though I can't speak to their
stability or long-term viability.


Matt

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Cornelius Puschmann <
cornelius.puschmann at uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:

> *Note:* I've also blogged this (in case links in the post don't work) and
> will list all alternatives suggested to me in that blog post:
> http://blog.ynada.com/616
>
> Dear all,
>
> A few days ago, the people behind Twitter archival site
> TwapperKeeper.com<http://twapperkeeper.com/> announced
> that they will be discontinuing the export feature of the service on March
> 20, 2011<
> http://twapperkeeper.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/removal-of-export-and-download-api-capabilities/
> >.
> Apparently the feature is in violation of Twitter’s terms of service, at
> least in the form it’s currently implemented in TwapperKeeper.
>
> Unfortunately this cuts off a number of academics who are investigating
> communication on Twitter for scientific purposes from a convenient data
> source. While it’s fairly easy to get data directly via the Twitter
> API<http://apiwiki.twitter.com/> (which
> is what TwapperKeeper was doing), I know many people who want to
> concentrate
> on the data itself, rather than running their own servers to scrape Twitter
> on a regular basis. What’s more is that Twitter’s attitude is worrisome:
> many of us have tried to get an exemption from API rate limits in the past,
> to no avail. Twitter doesn’t give researchers privileged access to their
> data, and now they’re crippling TwapperKeeper on top of that.
>
> Bottom line: what will we use after March 20? Ideally, a replacement would
> provide the following:
>
>   - the hashtag/search query functionality of TwapperKeeper,
>   - the export functionality of TwapperKeeper,
>   - exclusive use for academic purposes (on the grounds that this might
>   keep Twitter from shutting it down),
>   - stability and reliability,
>   - long-term viability.
>
> The last point is important, because I don’t think it will be difficult to
> set up a server somewhere to suit the needs of a few people, but a
> larger-scale solution seems more sensible in the long run. Maybe
> JISC<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/> can
> do something like that, based
> onyourTwapperKeeper<http://code.google.com/p/yourtwapperkeeper/>
>  (which they supported<
> http://twapperkeeper.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/jisc-funded-developments-to-twapper-keeper/
> >)?
> Or one of the big institutes (OII, Berkman)? Either way it would be nice to
> find an alternative that doesn’t give those of us with devs and major IT
> support behind them a huge edge over the rest…
>
> Thanks in advance for your comments,
>
> Cornelius
>
> ---
>
> Dr. Cornelius Puschmann
> Department of English Language and Linguistics
> Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany
> Junior Researchers Group "Science and the Internet"
> http://nfgwin.uni-duesseldorf.de
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