It is very important to backup your Twitter tweets ,followers and friends data if you consider Twitter seriously.If something goes wrong with your twitter account, you will not be able to easily retrieve your tweets or friends and followers.Sometimes Twitter can lose followers and it does not keep your older tweets. In the previous posts we have discussed about most useful Twitter applications and how to create easy twitter widget etc.
So it is very important to backup your twitter profile periodically. Here we will see how we can backup twitter profile completely using the Twitter API.
Read Related:Best tools and methods to backup and archive your twitter tweets
Backup Using The Twitter API
There are APIs provided by twitter that can be used to backup your tweets and account information.If you know bit of programming and XML you can utilize the twiter API for backing up the twitter profile.
You can submit queries to the Twitter API.The API will return the twitter Feed and other details.
1. Backup your tweets
User Timeline
This API method Returns the 20 most recent statuses posted from the authenticating user. It’s also possible to request another user’s timeline via the id parameter. This is the equivalent of the Web / page for your own user, or the profile page for a third party.You can change the page paramter to get the next 20 (page=2). You can save the results in your system and open the files using appropriate editor.
A. http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/TWITTERUSERNAME.xml?page=1
- This API returns the tweets in XML format
B. http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/TWITTERUSERNAME.rss?page=2
- This API returns the tweets in RSS format
C. http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/TWITTERUSERNAME.json?page=2
- This API returns the tweets in JSON format
D. http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/TWITTERUSERNAME.atom?page=2
- This API returns the tweets in JSON format
For example see the most recent Globinch tweets in RSS fromat.Click Here
2.Backup yor twitter followers
To backup your followers you can use the following API.Returns the authenticating user’s followers, each with current status inline. They are ordered by the order in which they followed the user, 100 at a time.You can change the page paramter to get the next 100 (page=2)
A. http://twitter.com/statuses/followers.xml?page=1
- This API returns the followers in XML format
B. http://twitter.com/statuses/followers.json?page=1
- This API returns the followers in JSON format
3. Backup your friends
To backup your friends use the following API.Returns a user’s friends, each with current status inline. They are ordered by the order in which the user followed them, most recently followed first, 100 at a time. You can change the page parameter to get the next 100 (page=2)
A. http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.xml?page=1
- This API returns the friends in XML format
B. http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.xml?page=1
- This API returns the friends in JSON format
Read more about Twitter API
Binu George , the author of Globinch.com, is a technology blogger from India and a software solution architect by profession. 
