We’ve created some archives of twitter conversations for SIGIR 2009 and for some of the workshops associated with the conference. These archives are useful because Twitter messages tend to evaporate after a while.
I know of the following archives:
- SIGIR09 proper, based on the #sigir09 and #sigir hashtags
- The IREval workshop based on the #ireval09 hahstag
- The SSM workshop based on the #ssm09 hashtag
If the other workshops had significant traffic, I am happy to archive & update the list above. TwapperKeeper is a service that archives twitter searches based on a specified hashtag. The data is then available through the web site and for download in tab- or semicolon-separated format. Saving your own copy means that you can refer to it later, and also makes it easier to do data mining or other research on the use of Twitter. I encourage people to download archives (although as new tweets come in the archives will get updated on TwapperKeeper) to make sure they persist even if TwapperKeeper doesn’t. Archive early, archive often.