After seeking a way to revive the GovTwit directory (including trialing interesting services like List.ly and TwitChimp), I’ve yet to find a solution that would include all of the features and functionality I’d like. So today I’m making all of the backend GovTwit data I have culled since 2008 available to anyone who may be able to make use of it.
As mentioned last November, I was hoping for a way to grow the directory beyond Twitter, to include other social media site IDs, and refresh the platform. But as a personal hobby site, I simply don’t have the resources, expertise or free time to fund or build a new back-end for GovTwit that would incorporate the types of features I wanted to add.
With the federal government now gathering an official list of agency accounts via HowTo.gov’s Social Media Registry, as well as resources like TweetCongress, GovSM, OhMyGov and 50+ other sites offering up related content, my hope is that someone somewhere will be able to find a way to make use of the GovTwit data.
What’s available
- A CSV file of 4,526 tagged Twitter IDs – It’s not necessarily pretty (some of the tags need to be cleaned up), but it’s the heart of the GovTwit data. A tagged list of all the individual and institutional IDs that were available in the directory as of 11/01/2011 in a csv file format.
- A zip of all the data saved from when GovTwit operated on the Floxee system. It’s a series of MongoDB files produced with mongodump that I personally have no way to read. It may contain historical tweets for the IDs in the directory, but I’m not certain. The file is too large to host here directly. If interested, please use the contact form here to request access and I’ll share via Dropbox or other location.
I’m making the GovTwit data available to use however anyone may want under a Creative Commons attribution license, and hope that someone will find interesting and useful ways to use the data!
–Steve
This dataset was created by Steve Lunceford and originally appeared at GovTwit.com. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by using the “Contact” form at http://GovTwit.com.
