Politwoops: A Search Engine For Deleted Tweets From Policitians

At the beginning of the year I wrote about PolitickerUSA, a free tool that allows users to quickly and easily read tweets from members of congress and other political leaders. Today, I want to point out another free service named Politwoops that launched at the end of May. Here, users can access and read tweets […]

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At the beginning of the year I wrote about PolitickerUSA, a free tool that allows users to quickly and easily read tweets from members of congress and other political leaders.

Today, I want to point Politwoops Logo1out another free service named Politwoops that launched at the end of May. Here, users can access and read tweets that have been deleted by members of congress.

In their words:

Politwoops, the only comprehensive collection of deleted tweets by U.S. politicians. From minor typos to major gaffes, Politwoops is now there to offer a searchable window into what they hoped you didn’t see.

The Politwoops web site is basic and direct. You’ll find a scrollable list with the latest deleted tweets at the top. You’ll also see when the tweet was deleted and how long it was posted before it was deleted.

The collection of deleted tweets can also be searched by keyword.

Politwoops Deleted Tweets From Politicians 2012 07 10 20 31 56

The service is also a reminder that removing what you’ve written on the Internet can often be challenging and in many cases, impossible.

Of course, just because a tweet is deleted doesn’t mean it’s something worth noticing or worthy of further investigation. However, given that fact that some politicians often tweet before actually thinking about what they’re saying makes Politwoops a resource worth knowing about especially as the party conventions and November elections draw closer. This blog post provides examples some of what you might find.

Politwoops is one of many wonderful government and Sunlight Logopolitical info resources, all free, provided by the Sunlight Foundation. The code was first developed by the Open State Foundation for use in The Netherlands to track deleted tweets by local politicians.

The Politwoops code is also being used to track deleted tweets from politicians in Canada, France, UK, and several other nations. Here’s a complete list. Only the U.S. site is operated by Sunlight.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Gary Price
Contributor
Gary Price is a librarian, author, and an online information analyst based in suburban Washington, DC. He is the co-founder and co-editor of INFOdocket and FullTextReports.com and prior to that was founder/editor of ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. He has worked for Blekko, Ask.com, and at Search Engine Watch where he was news editor. In 2001, Price was the co-author (with Chris Sherman) of the best-selling book The Invisible Web.

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