Doron, I would recommend using the Twitter API directly. Here is the page in the Twitter API Wiki that explains how to correctly call on the API for a search : http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-Search-API-Method:-search. When you make such a call into the API, it will return an XML file that can be imported into MS Excel (Windows only-- sorry, fellow Mac users). I wrote a step-by-step blog post on how to do this using the "user timeline" method when we were in the middle of our Twitter research project last semester: http://reyjunco.tumblr.com/post/219287195/how-to-export-twitter-updates-to-e... If you want to download a lot of tweets, make sure you pay particular attention to the *rpp* (returns per page) and the *page* parameters. I have a lot of experience with this as we downloaded and archived almost 3,500 tweets during our 15-week-long study. So, please let me know if you have any questions. Best, Rey Junco -- Dr. Reynol Junco Associate Professor Department of Academic Development and Counseling Director, Disability Services Lock Haven University http://www.reyjunco.com ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:02:22 +0200 From: "Friedman Doron" <doronf@idc.ac.il> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Q: Twitter text logs? Message-ID: <EAC062C903BCD049AE7C3602A2F373A5AFC1EB@JAMES.idc.ac.il> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi, Can anyone point us to authentic data from twitter that can be used for research purposes? We are looking for sub-networks of followers, and a set of texts generated by users that belong to the network. Alternatively status messages from Facebook with the corresponding friendship graphs can be useful as well. of course, the actual usernames can be encrypted for privacy. Of course we will give full credit to whoever has been able to harvest such data and make it available to the research community. Thanks! - doron ==================== Dr. Doron Friedman Lecturer, The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya (Israel) & Honorary Lecturer, University College London Mobile: +972-54-4461807 Office: +972-9-9527654 http://www.idc.ac.il/communications/avl -- Dr. Reynol Junco Associate Professor Department of Academic Development and Counseling Director, Disability Services Lock Haven University http://www.reyjunco.com