How to search your own tweets on Twitter

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If you've ever wanted to look back on your prior Twitter history and find an old tweet, you know that finding posts from weeks or years past is much easier said than done.

That's because until recently, Twitter didn't provide an easy way to search old posts. Sure, you could manually download your entire archive, but who wants to sift through thousands of tweets that way.

Thanks to Twitter's recent search update, searching your own tweets on Twitter is now both fast and easy.

You can use Twitter's newly revampedadvanced search to search through any user's tweet history, provided the account is set to be publicly viewable. Begin by entering the Twitter handle (or handles) you want to search in the "from these accounts fields." Note that you don't need to include the @ sign before the user name.

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From there, the rest of the fields will depend on what you're searching for and how specific you want to be. If I wanted to find every tweet I've ever sent about the San Diego Chargers, for example, I would type "chargers" into the "all of these words" field.

But you can also get a lot more specific in your queries by adding a date range, hashtags, @ mentions and other information to the search fields. Add dates to see tweets you sent during a specific time period. (Tip: if you can't remember the specific date you joined Twitter, your main profile displays the month and year you joined.)

You can also search by tweet location (if you've enabled location information in the past), retweets, and even specific types of tweets. The search will identify positive or negative tweets by searching for ":)" or ":(", for example.

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Of course Twitter's search is still somewhat limited, though the companysays it plans to expand the feature to be more comprehensive in the future. You can't search your direct messages or favorites, for example, though there are workarounds outside of Twitter.Snapbird, which requires users to log in with their Twitter credentials, allows you to search within your direct messages or tweets favorited by you or others.

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How to delete all your embarrassing tweets before you become famous

Oh, Internet. As newly-minted The Daily Show host Trevor Noah is learning, hell hath no fury like old tweets discovered to embarrass those new to the public spotlight.

Within hours of the announcement that Noah would replace Jon Stewart as host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, old tweets by Noah surfaced.

Whether the tweets are offensive or merely poor attempts at humor (a different kind of offense altogether), the Internet shame machine is out in full force.

Noah, like so many other individuals thrust from obscurity and into the limelight, forgot the first rule of social media: Delete that embarrassing social media paper trail!

Look, we've all done it. We've said something online, tweeted an off-color remark, or posted those photos from Sorority Formal 2005 to Facebook that, in hindsight, we wish we could take back.

And although it would be nice to think that people would understand that sometimes, stuff we tweet in 2010 doesn't represent who we are in 2015, that's just not how the world works. Despite the fact that a whole generation is growing up online, more connected than ever, the Internet hasn't yet decided on a set statute of limitations for Social Media Dumbassery™.

But don't worry. Mashable is here for you. Here are some ways to delete your own embarrassing Twitter past.

Advanced search is your friend

Twitter recently improved its advanced search features. The bad news is that means it's easier than ever for other people to search for embarrassing tweets you may have sent back in the day.

The good news it that you can use this tool to find your own tweets that might cross the line.

Go to https://twitter.com/search-advanced and enter in keywords and phrases, along with your own user account name.

This will help isolate tweets that might be deemed as intolerant, cruel or just plain unprofessional.

As an example, I searched "drunk" on my own account. Shockingly, the results weren't as bad (or as numerous) as I thought.

Twitter advanced search

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Still, I managed to find this gem from my second week of Twitter. The 25th birthday quarter-life crisis tweet.

Once you find offending tweets, you can delete them manually.

Getting nerdy about it

If you're a Windows user and you want to delete a lot of tweets but don't necessarily want to rely on the manual process of advanced search, there is a free tool called Twitter Archive Eraserthat works really well.

The tool works with your downloadable Twitter archive. The tool can then use regular expressions, search parameters and other information to selectively or bulk erase tweets.

The tool also includes the ability to bulk delete favorites and direct messages. Because remember, what you tweet isn't just visible. Stuff you favorite is visible too.

If you're really squeamish, the tool also works to delete everything you've ever sent.

Go nuclear, delete everything

OK, but what if you don't know what you are looking for? In that case, the best decision might just be to delete everything.

There are third-party tools such asTweetDeleter and TweetDelete that let you delete your Twitter histories either in bulk or with more selective options.

Twitter's API typically has a limit of 3200 tweets that it can access, so if you have tons of tweets, you might have to take a few passes with certain tools to remove everything.

There are even mobile apps, such asTweeticide for iOS, which can bulk delete tweets.

Other things to keep in mind

Deleting tweets doesn't necessarily mean they will totally disappear. Certain archives and aggregators might have retained copies of your tweets, so it may take some time before tweets totally "disappear."

Share your Twitter deletion strategies with us in the comments.

Don't get fired: This app will delete your embarrassing posts on social media

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If you've ever worried about old tweets or Facebook posts coming back to haunt you — but don't have time to sift through years of posts to manually delete them — a new app may be able to help.

Clear connects with your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts and analyzes your history, flagging posts with potentially inappropriate content. To guess what that is, Clear uses a combination of algorithms and IBM's supercomputer Watson to filter material.

The app was created by Ethan Czahor, who made headlines earlier this year when he abruptly resigned — less than 48 hours after landing the job — from Jeb Bush's campaign after a series of years-old offensive tweets surfaced — some of which included descriptions of women as "sluts" and complaints about being eyed up by gay men at a San Francisco gym.

Czahor says those tweets were "harmless" jokes, relics of his time with an improv comedy group, that were taken out of context.

"I was very well aware going in, [politics] was a one-strike-and-you're-out business," Czahor told Mashable. "I just didn't think i would strike out so soon, and in that way."

Right now, the Clear app identifies troublesome posts based on keywords, such as profanity. It also zeroes on on posts that mention general groups — such as women or gay people. Czahor argues any mention of groups is where you're likely to talk in generalities and stereotypes.

"Whether it’s good or bad, you should probably take a second look at it," he says.

IBM's Watson also uses sentiment analysis, highlighting posts it detects as using particularly negative language. The app then provides a score based on how many posts it flagged.

Clear analyzes your past posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and flags items with potentially offensive content.

It's still up to users to review and delete the offensive content, but the app simplifies the process with shortcuts.

Czahor acknowledges Clear is still "a work in progress," but says the app's accuracy will improve over time. In my testing, the app successfully detected several tweets with less than PG language and highlighted tweets with group words such as "Americans".

Interestingly, the app also highlighted tweets with complaints about specific products — the Motorola Droid 2 I had back in 2010 cropped up several times, for example — though I didn't spot anything worthy of the delete button.

Of course, text updates aren't the only type of potentially problematic posts. Photos and videos can be equally troublesome. Czahor said identifying photos is a feature "on our roadmap," along with adding other social networks. The app currently has a waiting list right now — about 300 people as of this writing — but he says he anticipates most will be able to get into the app within a few days or a week.

In the meantime, Facebook and Twitterboth recently rolled out improved search features — so you can more easily look for potentially embarrassing posts from your past either way.

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