A previous post described how to capture and share conference tweets (+ associated data like retweet count and @ mentions) using Scraperwiki and Viewshare. Going this route is a good one for creating and embedding customized collections of Twitter data on a website or sharing with friends and colleagues. If a more fine grained analysis of Twitter data are needed and different display options would be helpful Martin Hawksey’s Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet (TAGS) could be useful.
In contrast to the Scraperwiki and Viewshare combination, TAGS enables more control over what Twitter data are gathered. For example a search for #opendata(return Tweets with #opendata), #opendata and #gis(only return tweets containing #opendata and #gis), or #opendata not #gis(return #opendata tweets without #gis). Having these search options strengthens the ability to hone in on data.
TAGS really shines in the way that it presents data. Automatic data presentation options are included below.
Twitter data are made available in spreadsheet format
An overview of Twitter data collection characteristics is provided
A dashboard illustrates aspects of Twitter data like tweets over time
Twitter data like Retweets and Mentions are represented as a network
A ranked order of hashtags used in Tweets is provided
A searchable archive of the Twitter data collection is generated
Implementing TAGS is a fairly straightforward task made even easier by Stacy Blasiola’s documentation and Martin Hawksey’s video below. Admittedly, there are some tricky steps with respect to Twitter API authentication, but if you stay close to the instructions you should be up and running in no time.