

Show HN: tweetvaultHQ, my Twitter archiving and stats app - BigglesZX
http://tweetvaulthq.com/

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BigglesZX
Hi all,

Long time reader, first time submitter! I recently launched my first proper
web app, tweetvaultHQ (<http://tweetvaulthq.com/>), which is a hosted personal
archiving service for Twitter. A while back I was in need of a more effective
way of accessing my own historic content on Twitter, so I created a very
simple app that would periodically grab my tweets and store them. A friend
suggested this would make a useful hosted service, so that is what it became.

tweetvaultHQ archives your tweets and favourites from Twitter, presenting them
in an easily searchable interface. It features export options to get your data
out in various formats, and also provides a bunch of stats on your tweeting
activity that may inform or amuse in equal measure.

For me, it addresses two major needs: 1) giving better access to the content
I've placed on Twitter and 2) giving me better ownership of that data, in the
event of something awful happening to Twitter or my being otherwise unable to
access that content. I've built up quite a collection of tweets over the last
few years, and additionally have quite a bit of value in my favourites
collection. I wanted better control over that data.

This is the first app I've produced to provide a service to the public, so
this has been a real learning experience. Any feedback would be hugely
appreciated - I've received some valuable advice already, including
suggestions that I should raise the price (currently £1/$1.60 per month)!
Several people have mentioned competitors to this app (a few self-install apps
exist, such as TweetNest, and I'm aware of ThinkUp which has similar
functions), but I'm not too worried about being a market leader right now, I'd
just like to make enough for lunch now and again, and learn what I can.

I've got plenty of features on the roadmap, but feel free to suggest any you
desire. If you like the app, let me know. If you don't, I'd still like to
know! Many thanks for reading.

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e03179
£1/month? What is a '£'? I am kind of joking.

As a web-surfing American, when a website wants money and I don't see a '$'
sign, for whatever reason, the website loses credibility. I have no idea how
much this is going to cost me. So, I'd suggest having the USD pricing on your
website.

~~~
BigglesZX
Thanks for your comment! This is a very good point.

I know the pricing is only in £ on the front page, but it is visible in $ and
€ on the subscribe page.

Pricing across continents was something that caused some some consternation
from the beginning - I think I really need to do some geolocation, and present
more relevant prices throughout.

FWIW right now, a £ is worth about $1.60 :).

------
lucraft
You must start a job to import my account as soon as I sign up. 15 minutes
after signing up, I have already forgotten your website exists.

I will give you more feedback in 9 minutes.

~~~
BigglesZX
Thanks - you're absolutely right about this. I've forced an archive run for
you, your data should show up now.

~~~
lucraft
Thanks. Yeah, I like it. I've just used it to see all Tweets I've ever sent to
a particular person, which isn't something you can do on twitter.com (as far
as I know). It's also nice to see who I've tweeted to the most in the past.

Random suggestions:

* consider charging annually instead of monthly. * a shareable link to searches might be interesting * I'd like it to archive more! Like full conversations I've been in. * put pagination at the bottom as well as the top, took me almost 3 seconds to find it ;) * It'd be nice to have more detail on people I've mentioned, like a graph of mentions to each person where I can see when I started/stopped tweeting them etc.

What's your stack?

~~~
BigglesZX
Glad you like it and thanks for taking the time to follow up with this
feedback.

I think the charging model needs overhauling because a vast number of people
sign up on the trial and never subscribe. I think this is because the trial is
too limiting - what I should probably do is a give a free month (or at least,
some measure of free time) to everyone who signs up.

Do you think the monthly price is reasonable? Would you pay £12 / $20 per
year?

I'm investigating archiving mentions as well so the opportunity for
conversation threading would be there. Glad you mentioned this.

I'll duplicate the pagination controls too, good point!

Will take your stats suggestions onboard - this is definitely an area with a
lot of potential.

Thanks again :).

~~~
lucraft
Roughly reasonable yes. But it would be more palatable as an annual cost, for
some reason. That might just be me.

Re conversation threading: you are already archiving the reply_to_status_id
values, you don't need to look at mentions to figure out conversations.

~~~
BigglesZX
Good point! I could thread those in already. Will look into that. Thanks
again!

